“Is everyone free Thursday at 10am? If not, when you are free for our new-project meeting?”
If that’s how you figure out when to schedule meetings with your colleagues, there’s a better way built into Office 365, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Exchange platforms, which most businesses use. Best of all, it works on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, and not just in the Microsoft Outlook client.
The specific steps vary based on your calendar app, so I’ll show you how to check people’s availability in the various Outlook apps (including the web app) as well as in the Apple Calendar apps for macOS and iOS, which support Office 365, Microsoft 365 and Exchange servers if allowed by IT. (The Google Calendar and Samsung Calendar Android clients don’t work with Office 365, Microsoft 365 or Exchange.)
Do note that all invitees need to be using the same Office 365, Microsoft 365 or Exchange system, since that platform is where all calendar information is stored. For people outside your organization, you’ll have to use the old-fashioned “are you free this Thursday at 10am?” approach (sorry!). You can share calendar invites across different organizations — even with users of other platforms like Google G Suite — but you can’t check schedules outside your internal organization.
The basic process is the same across the calendar clients:
