6 Tricks I Use to Schedule Meetings in Outlook Like a Pro

If you can master the art of scheduling meetings in Outlook, you can avoid back-and-forth emails with meeting requests to resolve conflicting schedules. Here are some handy tips that will help you streamline your scheduling process.

1 Schedule Recurring Meetings

Recurring meetings in Outlook can stop the back-and-forth of setting up meetings that happen regularly. You can set up recurring meetings for events like your weekly team sync or a monthly check-in with a client.

Start by creating a new meeting, adding the attendees, location, and time as usual. Then, click on Make recurring to define how often the meeting should happen, whether it’s weekly, monthly, or on specific days like the first Monday of each month. Once you’re happy with the settings, click Save, and then hit Send. Attendees will receive a single invitation reflecting the recurring pattern.

As needs change, don’t forget to revisit your recurring meetings. You can easily edit the frequency and time, or even cancel the series from the original meeting invitation.

2 Utilize Polls for Group Availability

Coordinating with large groups can feel like a logistical nightmare, especially when you’re trying to accommodate everyone’s schedules. Rather than relying on back-and-forth emails, Outlook has a built-in scheduling poll feature that simplifies the process.

This handy feature lets you propose multiple meeting times to your attendees. They simply vote on the options, and Outlook automatically schedules the meeting based on the results.

To use this feature, start by creating a new meeting request and adding the attendees, but instead of picking a specific time, click the Scheduling Poll button in the ribbon. You can then propose multiple date and time options for the meeting, and Outlook will automatically suggest the most suitable options based on the availability of your attendees.

Once you’ve selected the time slots that work for you, click Next to review and adjust the poll settings if needed, then hit Create Poll. Outlook will generate a new email that includes a poll for the attendees, allowing them to vote on their preferred times. Once everyone has voted, Outlook schedules the meeting at the most popular time and sends out a confirmation.

This feature not only saves you time but also increases the likelihood of better attendance, since everyone has a say in when the meeting happens.

3 Share Calendars for Transparency

Sharing calendars in Outlook is an excellent way to improve team communication and eliminate the constant “Are you free on…?” pings. By sharing your calendar, your colleagues can see your availability and plan meetings more efficiently.

To do this, open your calendar, click on the Share button in the top ribbon, and choose the calendar you want to share from the dropdown menu. Alternatively, you can right-click your calendar in the navigation pane and select Sharing and Permissions.

From there, enter the email address of the person you wish to share your calendar with and choose the level of access you want to grant. This could range from simply allowing them to see whether you’re busy or available, to full permission to edit your calendar.

Once shared, team members will receive an email invitation to view your calendar, and they can immediately start coordinating more effectively. Calendar sharing in Outlook helps cultivate a culture of openness and improves collaboration within your team or organization.

4 Convert Emails to Meetings

Often, after an extended email discussion, it becomes clear that a meeting is needed to move things forward. Rather than manually creating a meeting invite from scratch, Outlook allows you to convert email threads directly into calendar appointments.

You can simply drag the email from your inbox to the calendar icon in the navigation pane. Outlook will automatically generate a new meeting invite with the email subject as the title and the email content in the body. You can then adjust the time, add attendees, and send the invite.

Another approach is to use the Reply with Meeting option. This is particularly helpful when you’re responding to an email that involves a meeting request. Open the email and click Reply with Meeting on the ribbon. This creates a meeting request pre-populated with the email sender as an attendee and the email content included—like this customer support email that I converted into a service appointment.

Converting emails to meetings improves the overall workflow and will help you easily track correspondence related to specific meetings, keeping all relevant information in one place.

5 Set Working Hours to Avoid Conflicts

It’s awkward to find yourself double-booked in Outlook and having to send that “I have another meeting” email. Or being scheduled in a meeting by a remote colleague at a time that is late at night for you.

Setting working hours in Outlook can prevent these scheduling snafus and help you maintain a healthy work-life balance.

In Outlook settings, head to Work hours and location section, and define your typical working days and hours. This will help others plan meetings that work better for your schedule. Also, in the Time zones section, do specify your time zone and let Outlook know if you’d like to be reminded to update your time zone when you are traveling across time zones.

While Outlook offers a slew of features to improve your scheduling workflows, you can use third-party tools for enhanced scheduling, especially with people outside your organization. Tools like Calendly, Cal.com, Lemcal, and Doodle integrate with Outlook and can be incredibly useful for scheduling with external clients or contacts.

Calendly and Doodle, for instance, sync with all your calendars to prevent double-booking and offer a simple interface for others to schedule meetings based on your availability. You can customize event types, set buffer times, and even create round-robin schedules for teams.

By incorporating these Outlook features and third-party tools into your scheduling workflow, you can significantly reduce the time and effort spent organizing meetings, freeing you up to focus on more important tasks. Take the time to explore these features and find the setup that best suits your needs.