5 Advanced Features to Have in Your Dynamics 365 Calendar Extension

Organizations have started using calendars aggressively after relaxing the importance of daily planning and its effect on productivity.

But calendars with basic features are not enough when we see them from an organization’s point of view. Apart from the regular usage of the calendar, it can help your organization with more functionalities if you do something more to it.

We researched current problems organizations using calendars as an extension of Dynamics 365 are facing. We figured out what you can do to add more benefits to your organization.

The features we will discuss are mostly extended versions of the existing calendar features. If you find them interesting you can ask your service provider to add them to your calendar.

Let’s find out how ideal calendars should be:

Meeting Links With Forms

Calendars provide a meeting link using which prospects can book an appointment. The sales team usually assorts it manually and passes it to team members.

Treating all the appointments with equal priorities can actually make you lose customers. You should be able to identify high-value leads quickly. And in order to know that, you have to have basic information about them like the industry, company size, location, etc.

You need forms to have all this basic information to qualify the leads and redirect it to the respective team members. The forms should be simple, short, and contain only basic information.

According to one of the reports, 82% of customers want a quick response to sales or marketing-related queries. If you take hours to reach to get them back, they might take off. You do not want this to happen, especially with high-quality leads.

You have a 50% chance to close the deal if you respond first to the prospect amongst the others. So why waste a moment losing a customer?

Your calendar should have a feature that asks questions and basic information before giving the booking link. In the backend, based on the industry type and size, it will be directly redirected to the right person. 

Long forms won’t work here. You have to ensure that you are asking only relevant questions and that the prospects are able to fill out the form within a minute. You can show them a Thank you note once you have shared the meeting link, time, and date with them.

Poll to Finalize a Team Meeting

Finding a common time to schedule a team meeting with teammates in different zones is a struggle. Finding a common time that works for all the invitees manually is a time-consuming task. 

Managers or anyone scheduling the meeting in your organization should not spend quality time finding a right to schedule a meeting.

That is why we feel calendars should have a polling system. Why not ask the invitees their preferred time rather than assuming it and rescheduling the meeting?

The meeting organizer will share the meeting poll with all the invitees, with several time slots. The time slot that everyone agrees on will be finalized.

If anyone is in a different time zone, the calendar should automatically translate it to their respective time zone. Thus, meeting polls are one of the best when scheduling a one-time meeting, and the host is trying to figure out the common time between all the invitees.

This feature can be added to meeting scheduling. When anyone tries to schedule a meeting, it asks whether you want to conduct a poll or not. And if they opt to take one, they can schedule the meeting once all the invitees have selected their preferred time slots and have the result in front of them.

Integration with Video Calling apps

When you manually schedule a meeting, there is endless room for errors. You might forget to add some of the details to it. For virtual calls, organizations usually use video calling apps like Zoom. 

What if you forget to add the zoom meeting link to the meeting you just scheduled and realize it before the meeting starts? It can create panic, and you have to send details or update them after that personally.

But an ideal calendar should have this feature. The calendar should integrate with the video calling app. It will automatically generate a video conference link for the event you are organizing. Even if you cancel or reschedule the meeting, details can be instantly updated.

While scheduling a meeting, you must select the video calling platform you use for the event location. So, the calendar will automatically include the meeting link in the description. Thus, all the invitees will get the meeting details along with the invitation.

Only View Access to General Tasks/Events

Managers are always trying hard to ensure everyone is following standardized best practices. As a solution, they note down all the procedure that needs to be followed along with the tasks.

These details can be shared with all their team members so that everyone is doing their task with standard practice. They can update the managers once their task is done.

Managers often see the details are being tampered with, or the team updates their progress in it. There are chances that the important things get tampered with, and others in the team get false information.

Every organization has a designed process that the team needs to follow. But if everyone in the team is not using or following it, the process won’t work.

Organizations often complain that everyone keeps following their process rather than the one they should. They edit and create their event types. This can create disparate output.

But organizations can lock the event details and share them with everyone in the organization. No one can make any changes except the owner of that event.

For example, If you want your sales team to ask the same question to all the leads of Dynamics, the managers can lock this event. So whenever the sales reps schedule a melting, they all will have the same question.

You can lock meeting descriptions, notification details, invitee questions, and other details, especially for the sales team who are in immediate touch with clients.

Equal distribution of meetings

As discussed above, if we automate the appointment distribution, there are chances that some team members will get more appointments and some will have fewer. This is unfair distribution of work.

Employees would not appreciate such situations, so tracking the number of appointments sales reps are assigned is important.

This brings us to over next feature that calendars must have. The calendar should track how many meetings are assigned to each team member. 

If someone has been assigned more meetings, they won’t be assigned any more meetings unless the other team members equal the number.

Balancing workload between team members would ensure no team members of yours have to overwork. Everyone should be treated equally. 

No one has to assign or calculate any tasks assigned to them manually. Everything can be automized. If there are any tasks with priority, admins can change the tasks assigned to the sales team.

How You to Add These Features to Your Calendar

If you are already using a calendar for your dynamics 365 and want any of the features discussed above, you can confront your service provider about it. They can develop it for you and add it to your calendar.

If you don’t have a calendar extension and wish to add it to your CRM, you can find a certified development company that sells calendar extensions. Ask them if you wish to have these features if they don’t have them. 

Most development companies are always open to suggestions and like to customize their product to their customer’s business requirements.

Identify Who Needs These Features

Although all the features can help you sort things, it is not necessary to have all of them in your calendar. 

A: If you are not using the calendar at all, first identify which department in your company is being affected the most without the calendar. Once you identify that, go through all the basic and advanced features (discussed in this blog). Identify what advanced features you would need. List down all your requirements. This will make it easier for you to explain your side of the story to the development company.

B: If you are already using Dynamics 365 Calendar as an extension to your CRM, you can survey your organization. Ask your employees what challenges they are still facing even after using the calendar. List down all those challenges. See if the features discussed above can help you resolve the issue. Contact your service provider and convey the challenges you are facing. Ask them about the features discussed above if you don’t have them in your calendar. If there is something that can solve the problems your organization is facing, they would be happy to customize it for you.

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