Does planning and organising really float your boat? 

OR…do you live in unorganised chaos, but long to kick-ass at organising? 

Either way, you might be surprised about how Microsoft tools can help you!  

In this blog you will learn: 

How to avoid the perils of virtual meetings using some simple tricks in Microsoft Outlook:  

• If you are a meeting organiser: easily find a timeslot where everyone is available for the meeting
  • Use scheduling assistant
  • Create a scheduling poll 
• If you are an attendee: Colour code your meetings to easily see how your week shapes up
• If you are a host or attendee: Prepare for your meetings with Viva Insights 

Easily find a timeslot where everyone is available for the meeting 

One of the first hurdles of getting a virtual meeting organised is finding a time when everyone is free. Funnily enough, people are often busy with other virtual meetings! 

Sending time suggestions back and forth over email or chat can be both time-consuming and soul destroying. Sometimes that’s necessary if you’re booking a meeting with someone external to your organisation, but if your meeting is with internal-people only (ie people who work in the same company as you) it’s EASY PEASY to find a time that suits. 

1. Use the scheduling assistant 

Once you’ve added all your internal attendees to your meeting invite, click on the Scheduling Assistant tab. 

This will show you a gantt-chart type view of everyone’s availability, allowing you to easily see and pick a free slot: 

2. If you do want to give people a bit more choice on when to do the meeting, you can start a new scheduling poll. 

Once you’ve added all your internal attendees to your meeting invite, click on the New Scheduling Poll option in the ribbon:

Then, pick a date, and the ‘poll’ will show you which free slots are available for everyone, or only some people : 

Choose which options you want to give people (you can also choose options for other dates) and then click next: 

This will give you a summary of the options you’re giving (try not to give too many!). Once you click on create poll, an email will generate to your attendees with the poll embedded so that they can cast their votes. 

You’ll get an email when people have voted: 

Then you can view the results of the poll, send a reminder if needed, and schedule the meeting: 

You can use this option for meetings with attendees external to your organisation, but Microsoft won’t be able to see their availability, so you’ll be picking potential meeting slot options a bit blindly. 

For other meeting prep to consider, check out one of my older blogs here: Other prep to consider: https://lyndsay.blog/2022/01/19/before-you-set-up-that-virtual-meeting 

Colour code your meetings 

I like to see at a glance in my calendar how my week is shaping up meetings-wise. To do this, I colour code all of my meetings orange in my Outlook calendar. 

If you want to do this too, you simply need to use Categories. 

When you’re creating the meeting – click on Categorize at the top: 

Then choose a colour from the dropdown 

The first time you use a new colour Outlook will ask you to give it a name: 

Press ok and your meeting will be categorised! 

You can also right click on any calendar item to categorise it. 

Then when you glance across your calendar, if your meetings are all the same colour, you can easily see how many you’ve got, whether there are any clashes, and how intense your week’s going to be! 

Prepare for your meetings with Viva Insights 

This is a genius shortcut to making sure you’re prepared for all your meetings – but it’s hiding. 

Open up a new meeting invite and click on Viva Insights: 

One of the options that should show is ‘Prepare for your meetings’ 

This will show you issues like your conflicts, and where not all attendees have accepted: 

And for some meetings, you have the option to schedule yourself some preparation time: 

It will show you all your meetings for the upcoming week, so it’s a great way of seeing any actions needed without having to click in and out of the different appointments. 

You can find out more about how Viva Insights works here: Personal insights FAQ | Microsoft Learn

Let me know any tips and tricks you use for getting your virtual meetings organised in the comments! 

If you know someone who would benefit from reading this blog, please share it!