Over the past year and a half, I have transitioned my day to day collaboration with colleagues to Microsoft Teams. I find myself in Outlook less and less but still have a need for it as others work through the same transition to Teams that I have. Not being in Outlook all day I do tend to get delayed or backed up on emails.
Last week when I opened Outlook the MyAnalytics Add-in sparked some curiosity when it recommended that I block some time on my calendar. It was at that point that I started reading the other recommendations that it was presenting to me in what is called Informative cards. Cards that included ToDo, Unread emails from important people, Email read statistics, and the one that caught my eye, Blocking calendar time.
I took a look at my calendar and realized that meetings were consuming most of my week. I clicked on the Informative Card that was recommending that I block time. It presented me with a few open times on my calendar that I could choose from. I selected one of the time slots, provided a description and hit OK. Going back into my calendar I could see that it not only blocked the time but also added the description as the subject as well as categorized with color the blocked time so that it was obvious that it was time that I allocated myself.
Checking out the other cards I could see that it was recommending Tasks (To Do's) that I may want to complete based on comments that were made in email responses. These cards make it easy to open the original email and also give quick buttons to mark complete. MyAnalytics is analyzing my inbox in real time and making recommendations that I may otherwise have forgotten about.
I am now spending less time trying to find emails or remembering to add that To Do item to my list. And if I missed an email or a task based on something I have put in an email, I feel confident that MyAnalytics will be reminding me.
See today's cards that showed up for me below. You can see that I have to handle some overlapping meetings on my calendar as well as an email that I sent to Chet, letting him know I need to follow up with a task.
When I click on the To Do card I am presented with the options to view the email or mark the To Do as Done.
I am excited to explore MyAnalytics further and can't wait to see what new cards are presented in the coming days and weeks.
If you are interested in more details, check out MyAnalytics Outlook Add-In. You might want to take a look at the MyAnaltics Dashboard as well to see how you collaborate with colleagues and spend your time at work.