Forum Discussion
Dean Suzuki
Microsoft
MicrosoftCalendaring: Changing the default meeting time
Hi,
I am researching a customer question. They would like to change the default meeting duration to 25min or 55min instead of 30 or 60 minutes. They would like to keep the meeting start time default to be on the hour or half-hour. The driver between this request is that their employees are booked in back to back meeting and it takes time for them to walk between conference rooms so they are late to each meeting. The customer would like to chagne the default duration to 25 minutes to allow 5 minutes for their employees to walk between meeting. I saw that you could change the time scale on the calendar view, but this doesn't meet their requirement. Ideally, this solution would persist across the Outlook client, OWA, and Outlook mobile. Has anyone seen a solution that meets this requirement?
cruiz - This functionality is available since Feb 19 as per uservoice . If you want to roll out this change centrally and ensure that the end user cannot set their own custom end early time then you can change the registry key policy settings via -HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar and updates both EndEarlyShort and EndEarlyLong values as well as the EndEventsEarly key.
Dean Suzuki Agreed! I'd like this functionality as well. Google Calendar does it...
cruiz - This functionality is available since Feb 19 as per uservoice . If you want to roll out this change centrally and ensure that the end user cannot set their own custom end early time then you can change the registry key policy settings via -HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\Calendar and updates both EndEarlyShort and EndEarlyLong values as well as the EndEventsEarly key.
this uservoice is no more available. And seems like this option is still not available for org-wide updates.
Absolutely fantastic to see someone from Microsoft requesting the same feature that we need! Having a standard meeting time slot of 25, 55, 85 minutes, etc makes sense on so many levels. Look at what we call the 'academic hour' which is 55 minutes (or is it 50?). You need time to physically transport yourself from one classroom to the next. In a business setting, the current meeting attendees need to get out of the room and the new ones in. We are using lots of Skype coupled with some small conference room skype solutions. Here it's not a physical movement, but we need recycled OXYGEN in the room; pretty vital for a functioning meeting brain :-) (P.S. Lotus Notes can do this)
I recall once using a plug in to Outlook that would not allow back-to-back meetings. Does this still exist?
- Do not know. I have never seen such a plug in. And I would not be a fan of a plug in for such a specific purpose, would rather see MS put this capability into the Outlook baseline functionality.
There's a DefaultMeetingDuration parameter you can set via Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration:
-DefaultMeetingDuration <Int32>
The DefaultMeetingDuration parameter specifies the default duration in minutes for new meetings. The default value is 30 minutes.Doesnt seem to take effect in clients though :) Let me ask around, see if it's supposed to work...
- Unfortunately that's quite a specific requirement, and while I'm sure others would probably want to do the same realistically this is basic human time management. You may have back to back meetings with no space in the calendar, but reminders come up on devices/Outlook/wearables so they should be able to tell the person/people they are meeting with "sorry I have to go in 5 minutes as I need to get to my next meeting and prepare".
Hey Loryan - I agree it's a "specific requirement". Every Exchange/Office platform I've worked with has had this same request come in to accomodate the "culture" of the company. I would think this would be something specific that MS would see beneficial gain by accomodating. It could certainly change the efficiency of the user community within any company or university/school system.
Basic human time management is often overwhelmed by the meeting organizer anyhow but it would certainly assist in shaping cultural standards. ;)
