Outlook for iOS Gets a New Scheduling Experience

Outlook for iOS Gets a New Scheduling Experience

Microsoft Outlook for iOS is picking up a great feature from the desktop version of the app: the scheduling assistant. But you’ll need to add an Office 365 commercial account to see it.

“Our goal with Outlook has been to provide a mobile experience that’s good for more than reading messages while standing in line for coffee,” the Outlook Team explains. “As part of our mission, we released a new and improved calendar on iOS and Android in September that brought you things like Maps and Skype for Business integration.”

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This week’s update applies only to Outlook on iOS, though Microsoft notes that the Android and Windows 10 Mobile versions will be updated soon as well. And it brings the scheduling assistant from the desktop versions of Outlook down to the phone. As this animated image so aptly demonstrates.

The idea is that when you schedule meetings with others, it helps to know what their schedules are so you can find free time that works for everyone. So you can now create an event, add coworkers, and then tap the date picker to access the scheduling assistant. Times that work for everyone will show in white, while yellow is used to indicate partial availability. And red is for no availability. From here, you tap the time picker and drag and until it turns green, indicating that everyone is available at that time. Again, since Microsoft already did the hard work:

As noted, you will only get this functionality if you’re using an Office 365 commercial account.

You can download Outlook for iOS from the Apple Apps Store.

 

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Conversation 8 comments

  • 144

    Premium Member
    31 October, 2016 - 9:47 am

    <p>Still waiting for the update to show up in the app store, but the article appeared to say it also works for on-prem folks "The feature is currently available on Outlook for iOS when connected to Office 365 or the latest versions of Exchange."</p>
    <p>I’d assume that means as long as you’re on Exchange 2016 you’re good, but it is oddly non specific.</p>

  • 5767

    31 October, 2016 - 11:43 am

    <p>MS killing it on iOS!</p>

  • 7719

    31 October, 2016 - 12:29 pm

    <p>"Our goal with Outlook has been to provide a mobile experience that&rsquo;s good for more than reading messages while standing in line for coffee". That’s great, but unfortunately many of us in large organization environments cannot even do that because you have failed to update the application to remove the credential-storage-on-third-party-server issue that keeps the application banned from connecting to our Exchange servers.</p>

  • 5542

    01 November, 2016 - 5:42 pm

    <p>I REALLY wanted to use Outlook with my corporate account but gave up. The UI and the way it works is horrid for me. &nbsp;I’m sure it works well for others but it just didn’t work for me.</p>

  • 187

    02 November, 2016 - 1:57 am

    <p>This would be really helpful on a consumer level as well – to arrange meetups with friends, dinner/lunch, parties etc…</p>

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