Why Organizations Should Integrate Calendar With Dynamics 365

Time management is the key to success. If you can manage your daily schedule wisely, it undoubtedly improves productivity. Completing all your tasks by EOD hits differently. A sense of completion boosts inner confidence and a feeling of achieving your daily goals. It motivates you to achieve more the next day. 

However, most organizations complain that their employees cannot manage multiple tasks in a day. They find it difficult to track time. They feel it is a time-consuming process to manage a calendar. We have a lot of calendars available in the market, but they do not use them. 

It can be true if they use CRM and Calendar as two different tools. They have to maintain their tasks in the calendar and CRM both. It starts getting complicated as tasks keep adding. Over time they will stop updating the calendar, and then there is no going back. 

However, you can help your employees manage their day better by integrating the calendar with the CRM. Let’s find out how this concoction can help benefit employees or organization in general:

To-do List is a Must

Before you start your day, you should have clarity on all tasks you have to accomplish. And the best way to have it sorted is with a to-do list. You must note down everything and anything you wish to complete, irrespective of how big or small that task is. 

For larger projects, which might take days to get completed, you can break them down into smaller sections and add one section for each day. This distribution of more significant tasks to smaller ones will help while plotting time for each task in the calendar.

You can also assign subtasks to your teammates. You can easily select the project and the assignees while creating a task. All this becomes a lot easier because the calendar is integrated with your CRM. All the CRM details are available on the calendar.

Customize Your Calendar

Even calendars can look messy if you do not know how to assort tasks. You will likely have different types of tasks to accomplish. For example, you will have meetings, project work, calls, etc., in a day. For instance, you may have two meetings, three project tasks, and four daily calls. It would look much more confusing if you had all these added to your timeline. 

Thus, even without reading, you will not know what’s next in your schedule. But the calendar plugins have a solution to this. You can color different code categories to have clarity. Meetings will have red color, project work tasks will have a blue color, and calls will be in green. 

You can also color code projects if you have the same task for different projects. Thus, you can customize it as per your daily schedule or in a way that works for you.

Sharing is Caring!

Asking everyone for their availability is no one’s favorite task. Also, knowing what your teammates are working on will keep them informed in case of any queries. And this calls for a shareable calendar.

Yes, with Dynamics calendar, you can share calendars in your organization. If you share your calendar with your teammates and other managers, they can see your schedule. This will help them schedule a meeting or contact them to resolve queries.

A lot of will be saved, especially while scheduling a meeting, because you will have a clear view of the schedules of all the invitees, and you can choose a time that works for them. 

An ideal calendar should have a feature that shows a warning “Not available” when your meeting time clashes with your invitee’s schedule. You need not have to manually go and check everyone’s schedule and figure out a time that works for all.

Leave Management

Managers must keep resource availability in mind and plan the tasks for the next day/week/month accordingly. There is a constant back and forth between tools to see their availability and tasks queue. 

Sometimes, managers fail to verify the availability of resources and assign tasks for the day resources are on leave. They might miss essential tasks having strict deadlines. They might not realize till the end of the day when they see task status has not changed, and no one has worked on it. 

Checking resource availability before assigning a task is also not feasible as it consumes much of their time. It would help if you had a solution that shows “Resource unavailable” when you assign a task to someone for the date they are on leave. 

If you wish to integrate a calendar plugin into your Dynamics 365, this should be a feature as it will reduce the work of managers. As of now, calendars provide a feature where resources can apply for leaves from the calendar itself. 

Additionally, their reprinting head can approve or reject their request from the calendar. Thus, they do not have to manage an attendance sheet anywhere else. They can check the availability of that resource before assigning any tasks to them.

View Matters

The way your calendar looks can make a huge difference. Everyone has a different choice or way of looking at their schedules. Some like the Gantt view, and some might like the List view. If you only have one format for everyone, the calendar might not be productive for them as it should be.

So, calendar plugins provide different views. Choose whatever works for you. View the calendar day/week and month-wise. When you use calendar plugins, you can choose the color theme you like. Not everyone likes blue! So choose the color you feel works for you and start your day with perfect task management.

Reminders are Saviors

A digital calendar’s purpose is not just to have a written schedule with time; that you can do in a diary as well. Digital calendars work as a reminder. They remind you by sending pop-up notifications and emails that you have a meeting in the next 10 minutes.

An ideal calendar plugin should allow you to choose the reminder time, whether you want it 5 mins before the meeting or ten or more. It should also allow you to add text so that you enter all the things you need to carry with you. When you see the reminder, it will also show the note that you added earlier.

Not just meeting, you must set reminders for tasks as well. If something critical needs to go before the given deadline, reminders will help you not miss any of it, and you will have your schedule on track.

Drag and Drop at Your Rescue

When one has already spent a lot of time scheduling a meeting, rescheduling it is like adding fuel to fire. Re-entering details or changing them takes time. The time spent behind all these is counterproductive. It doesn’t benefit either the company or the employee. 

It is easy to reschedule all your meetings in a day; drag and drop the tasks to the desired time. But, if you use a Dynamics 365 calendar plugin, you drag the meeting and drop it to the other decided time! It is simple and easy.

Filter Your Thoughts

Having multiple tasks on a calendar can confuse anyone. What if you want to find a task canceled or completed by you or your team members? Opening every task and checking its status is not a feasible solution. 

Likewise, what would you do if you wanted to see how many meetings you have in a day? Counting manually is not an option because you must use your diary. 

So, calendar plugins have this feature where you can filter categories, task status, and a lot of other things. You will only see what you want to see then. It helps in having clear thoughts while working on multiple tasks.

Mobile Compatibility

A calendar is to manage your day. And that is why mobile compatibility is a must. You cannot have a calendar plugin that works only on your laptops or desktops. If that is the case, many of your employees might be unable to make the best use of it.

The employees with on-field jobs usually stay out of the office for most of the day. They cannot use the calendar if it is not mobile-compatible. So, a calendar plugin should have mobile compatibility. All its features should work exactly as it works on the web.

Final Words

If you agree that integrating a calendar with the CRM is a way to go, you can get it developed by a certified company that offers Microsoft plugins. If you do not have that time, search Dynamics 365 calendar in MS App Source, and you might find a ready-to-use plugin. You can always ask for customization if you wish to have additional features. They also offer free support and version updates for their customers. You must subscribe to their yearly plan to unlock all these benefits.

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