Outlook Combinations
Most of us use Outlook strictly as an email application but there’s
really a lot more to it. Calendar, tasks, notes and journal don’t get
quite as much attention as the contacts and email sections. Not only are
these sections of Outlook useful in and of themselves, but they can by
combined with email to enhance their use.
So how do you combine the calendar with email? It’s called a meeting
request. You can create one by going to File > New… You’ll see this
menu.
If you’re a shortcut key fan, you can just use Ctrl+Shift+Q as you see
in the right column of the menu bar.
The meeting request creator (seen below) allows you to add people from
your address book and see their calendars—that way you know when/if they’re
available to meet.
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When the invited attendees get the email, they’re asked to accept or
reject the invitation. If they accept, the time is automatically blocked off
on their calendar. Some companies keep conference rooms on the exchange
server and they are ‘invited’ to the meeting just like a person. Of
course, they always accept the invitation as long as they’re free!
You can also issue a Task Request. It’s a To Do item that you ask
someone else to accept. For instance, the project manager may set up a
number of tactical steps necessary to accomplish and a schedule for each of
them. Then, each task along with a priority and a due date can be emailed to
the appropriate parties: communications requests to PR, engineering
milestones to production, etc. Like the meeting requests, recipients are
asked to accept or decline the honor. Upon acceptance, the tasks go directly
onto the tasks list with the assigned priority and due dates.
Of course, this can be risky business if they have no real reason to
accept your request. Many people object to being assigned tasks: Outlook is
a helpful tech-nology, but no technology can help with office politics!
For the most part, these enhanced features will work only within a
corporate LAN, but later versions of Outlook can send enhanced emails
externally, so it’s worth a try!
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