A prospect gave Chat GPT a challenge:
”Find a software solution that can report on the time that users book in their Outlook calendar. We do not want the user to have to log, track, input or have to fill out a timesheet so it must be simple and easy to use. We want to analyze what users have scheduled on their calendars to understand where resources need to be deployed.
They found our Outlook Optics™ outlook analytics tool and haven’t looked back.
Analyzing time from Outlook calendars with Outlook Analytics
Many people want to understand what teams are working on using Outlook calendars. Organizations often wonder if Outlook can show how employee time is spent, but Outlook doesn’t have any analytics tools. Exporting calendar data is difficult, time-consuming, and quickly becomes outdated. What’s needed is a real-time tool for analytics, visualization, and reporting—and that’s exactly what Outlook Optics™ provides.
How Outlook Optics is the perfect solution for analyzing calendars
Timewatch OutlookOptics™ is the perfect solution for these needs, and it’s incredibly easy for businesses to start using. Companies simply activate an OutlookOptics™ account and add the employees they want to analyze.
AI groups appointments by type so you can easily see what people are working on.
Once set up, they get a complete view of employee Outlook calendars, along with powerful analytics and reporting. Employees don’t need to install anything or change the way they use Outlook. Outlook Optics leverages the rich information already available in their Outlook calendars, making it completely unobtrusive for your team.
Powered by Microsoft, Outlook Optics displays multiple Outlook calendars on one screen
How Outlook AI turns employee calendars into valuable business data
OutlookOptics™ turns your everyday calendar appointments into valuable business data. It provides detailed employee activity views, using smart AI to group Outlook appointments into meaningful categories relative to each employee.
Outlook calendar analytics – AI analysis of appointments provides valuable employee activity analysis
Outlook Meeting Analytics
Outlook Optics AI also provides full visibility and analytics of employee Outlook meetings.
Businesses can see how many meetings employees have in a week or month, how much time is spent in meetings, who else attended and what meetings are about. Every aspect of employee meetings can be analyzed – show accepted meetings and declined meetings, even teams meeting acceptance reporting and teams meeting analytics.
Color coding by type of work
If employees already use Outlook Categories, Outlook Analytics AI can utilize these too. Outlook Optics can even merge categories to color-code appointments and make it super clear what kind of work is being done. This makes it easy to see what everyone is doing quickly and overcomes issues with categories being unique to individuals.
The last three calendars demonstrate the clarity color coding brings. Blue is consultancy, Orange is Vacation, Green are customer meetings. You set your own colors and types.
Create targeted views with Outlook Analytics
Need to see everyone with an upcoming vacation or all the meetings related to a specific type of work? Outlook Optics can provide calendar analytics and reports, giving you instant answers to your key questions about calendar events.
Example view of upcoming leave / vacation calendar by employee
Outlook heatmap and analytics views
Outlook Optics heatmaps offer valuable insights into important metrics like employee utilization, productivity, and future availability, enhancing the understanding of email performance and internal email analytics for better decision-making.
There’s more if you need it
Outlook Optics starts simple, and this is where most companies start off – just wanting to see what people are doing and analyze time. Some progress to wanting more analytics, more interactivity, more collaboration and control. This level of flexibility is built into Outlook Optics.
Although Optics starts with facilities to help companies make sense of their employees’ Outlook calendars, it can be expanded to add centralized calendar management and even resource scheduling and time tracking using Outlook calendars as the source data.
Outlook Integration – Powered by Microsoft
Outlook Optics is built on the same seamless integration technology Microsoft use with all Outlook clients, which means Outlook Optics behaves exactly like Outlook.
Integration is seamless and fully bi-directional. As appointments are made or edited in Outlook they are visible in the Optics. There are no messy links added to appointments, no special steps users need to take – everything is as seamless and transparent as it is using Outlook itself.
Optics even includes important security features to prevent unauthorized changes to crucial bookings. This makes Outlook Optics the easiest way for companies to gain deep insights and analytics from their Outlook calendars without any hassle for employees.
Supercharge your Outlook implementation
Ready to unlock the power of your Outlook calendars and gain valuable insights into your team’s activities with advanced calendar analytics? Talk to an Outlook Optics specialist today.
Speak with a specialist
See how Outlook Optics provides invaluable calendar analytics Outlook to help companies see what employees are working on.
More about Outlook AI, Outlook analytics, reporting and Outlook scheduling
Are there really no reports or analytics in Outlook?
There are some reports available in Outlook, but only to do with activations and administration.
It is possible to export data in old versions of Outlook, but at present there is no export option in New Outlook, and even if you could the data would need to be coallated which is time consuming. Worse, the data is out of date as soon as it is exported as calendar data changes continually, so data needs to be continually exported and coallated over and over again. OutlookOptics offer real-time analytics and reporting.
Can Outlook Optics report on the time that employees' book in their outlook calendar?
Yes, you can report on appointment data in Outlook calendars in real-time with Outlook Optics.
Can we analyze what our employees have scheduled on their calendars?
Yes, you can analyze what employees have scheduled in their Outlook calendars, analyze utilization, productivity and future availability.
We use Outlook Categories can we analyze the time our employees are working on each category?
Yes, Outlook Optics supports Outlook Categories, so you can analyze the time employees work on each category.
Can we export Outlook calendar data to Excel?
Yes you can export Outlook calendar data from Outlook, but it isn’t easy, only works with older versions of Outlook and is out of date the instant it is exported.
Outlook Optics provides numerous real-time analytics and reporting tools as well as a simple and easy export facility if you need it.
Can we look forward and see availability and capacity
Yes. An Availability heat map is included, which provides a view of the chosen employees over the range of dates you choose. Availability is also included in the advanced Summary view which shows the available hours (or overbooked hours) per person per day.
We want a simple solution, one that doesn't affect how people use Outlook or add exta work
This is a very common request. People even say the don’t want “big brother” software, they don’t want it to be intrusive and definitely don’t want to change the way employees use Outlook. Rest assured, once setup for your company, Outlook Optics is completely plug and play and is completely transparent to employees.
What happens with private appointments?
As a default, private appointments are excluded, but they can be included so that availability can be more accurately seen. However when private appointments are included only the time of the appointment is visible, the details are hidden.
How is Outlook Optics implemented?
Outlook Optics is Web Solution that seamlessly ntegrates with the Microsoft Office 2365 Administration System. |As you’d expect with a secure implementation, installation requires involvement from the company’s IT Team and MS Office Administrators.
Once implemented there is some setup that must be performed as Outlook Optics has to learn how your company uses Outlook. This requires some collaboration between Timewatch implementors and your organization, but setup is complete, everything is simple, easy and seamless – simply add employees to Outlook Optics and their calendars become available to view and analyze in seconds.
how to see who has accepted a meeting in outlook if you are not the organizer
Outlook Optics provides full visibility of all employees that have accepted meetings, accepted tentatively, declined or not responded.
Is it possible to show declined meetings in outlook
Yes it is. Outlook Optics can provide full visibility of which employees have declined meetings and meeting metrics such as the number of meetings accepted, declined or not answered.
Does Outlook Optics provide detailed meeting analytics and reporting features?
Outlook Optics provides full Outlook meeting analytics, analysis and reporting.
Is Outlook Optics compatible with New Outlook?
Yes. Outlook Optics is compatible with New Outlook as well as the older Outlook desktop versions for Windows and Mac as well as Outlook Web Access (OWA), Outlook mobile and tablet editions.
Is there an Outlook AI system to help analyze Outlook Calendars?
Yes, Outlook Optics is an Outlook AI system that analyzes employee Outlook calendars to provide companies insight into what people are working on.
 | Timesheet entry from OutlookOrganizations that use Microsoft Outlook can enhance productivity with advanced email analytics tools like OutlookTime®, which automates timesheet entry as users manage their calendars. |
 | Automating timesheet entry from Google CalendarTimesheet entry just got a whole lot easier for Google Calendar users. The latest Timewatch X6.3 not only works with Google Calendar, but it also automatically includes calendar items as draft timesheet entries, enhancing productivity with valuable insights and advanced email analytics features. |
