Timewatch: The Solution to Outlook’s Meeting Management Gaps
Timewatch enhances Outlook meeting management to make dealing with shared calendars easier and more insightful.
Timewatch’s advanced shared and group Outlook calendars used to work the same way as Outlook – but with enhanced appointment information and color coded. Customers asked us if there was a way to highlight meetings in Outlook calendars and also show the status of people (invited, accepted, tentative & the organizer) within the group calendar. They also wanted to query Outlook meeting information get analytics, reports and meeting statistics at a detailed level.
This analytics need is one that goes far beyond simple scheduling of meetings. In Outlook there is no way to look across employee or team calendar views to see all meetings or find out what they are for, how long they last, when they happen and who does or doesn’t attend. Timewatch solves this with Outlook calendar analytics that allows querying of any aspect of organization wide meeting analysis, for example:
Analysis of the spread of Outlook Meeting Duration
Analysis of when Outlook meetings happen
(out of hours meetings highlight the effect of meeting times on people in different timezones)
Enhancing Outlook meeting management tools
Timewatch customers have consistently asked if it’s possible to enhance Outlook to include features like displaying a view of just meetings, highlighting the meeting organizer in the group calendar, or providing a mouseover to check attendee status, or, most critically, offer comprehensive calendar analytics and reporting.
Standard Outlook and Teams products simply do not provide these capabilities but at Timewatch we love to say “yes, we can”. We created a specialized solution for Outlook and Teams to unlock true meeting intelligence for our customers.
These analytics are essential for visualizing and quantifying time spent in meetings, measuring attendance, and understanding meeting success.
Timewatch’s Outlook Calendar App Provides the Essential Enhancements
Timewatch has stepped forward to as the definitive answer to these organizational demands, integrating essential features directly into its shared calendar systems like Outlook Optics™, Whitespace®, and Time&Space®.
Our software is the solution that bridges the gap in Microsoft’s ecosystem by enhancing Outlook with more meeting visibility features. Starting with Outlook Optics™, customers immediately gain access to the full spectrum of sought-after features. The software brings all the necessary analytics, visuals, and granular access to Outlook meeting information that the native platform lacks. Businesses finally gain control and insight over their meeting culture and employee time usage.
Superior Visibility and Actionable Data
The most immediate and impactful refinement offered by Timewatch’s software is the dramatic improvement in meeting visibility in shared calendars.
Unlike the native Outlook and Teams views, which forces users to hover over appointments to see if they are meetings and open them to find details of attendees and their status, Timewatch introduces appointment icons added top the top right hand corner of Outlook meetings to clearly show which appointments are meetings , your attendance status, and in shared calendars the acceptance status of other invitees. Who knew something so seemingly simple could enhance user calendar experience so much?
New Outlook meeting status indicators
Meeting Organizer
Meeting accepted
Meeting tentatively accepted
Meeting not yet accepted
Who knew something so seemingly simple could enhance user calendar experience so much?
Visibility of Outlook meeting attendees has also been enhanced. Within Timewatch shared calendars an enhanced mouseover shows attendees and their status. This makes it significantly easier and faster to scan calendars for meetings and their attendees.
By prioritizing visibility and providing actionable data – such as time-spent-in-meetings analytics and attendee counts – Timewatch transforms Outlook from a passive scheduling tool into an active, intelligent meeting management platform.
AI Analytics & Access to Raw Data
Another major enhancement Timewatch brings to Outlook is high level meeting analytics and reporting, in particular AI analysis of Meeting activity, which is lacking in Outlook.
Timewatch AI analyzes Meeting Details to link together similar or related meetings to help businesses better analyze the type of work, event types or purpose of meetings.
Detailed Meeting Analysis via Teams
Microsoft Teams provides meeting analysis of meeting attendees, the time they joined and left meetings and their level of engagement. This provides companies with valuable insights into attendee activity within a meeting, but does not help with high level overviews of meetings. Timewatch adds this high level meeting anlaysis: what meetings were for, when they happen, how they affect employees in different timezones, and how much time as a whole companies are spending in meetings.
Outlook Meeting Analytics
AI Analytics for Outlook Meetings provides powerful insights into employee time spent in meetings, when meetings happen, what they are for, who attended and more. Team leaders and administrators can use the built-in dashboard to see these metrics, view the total time on an individual’s calendar (represented by a blue bar showing weekly time), and drill down into specific weeks or appointment analytics to understand the underlying details. The ultimate goal of this tool is to help companies understand more about workforce meetings and ultimately help them make meetings more efficient.
Any questions?
Want to learn more about Timewatch’s Outlook Meeting calendar enhancements, shared calendar app, Team calendar app or calendar analytics for Outlook? Contact us today for a free demo or trial.
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More about Timewatch and Outlook Meeting Management enhancements
How easy is it to implement Timewatch Meeting Management enhancements?
Implementation is straight forward. The system is provided as a Microsoft Office App and an associated cloud system – although an on-premises or private cloud system is available for larger customers and corporates.
What does Timewatch add to Outlook that can't be done in Outlook alone?
Timewatch adds configurable, multi-employee shared calendar views. You can create and save as many views with as many or as few employees as you need in a view over as many days or weeks that you want to view, with as much or as little details in view as you want. In Outlook you are limited to the number of employees you can view, the number of days you can view and the level of details visible.
For meetings Timewatch adds meeting status icons which makes it simple and easy for users to see which appointments are meetings and whether employees have accepted or not as well. It also enhances meeting mouseovers to show who the other attendees are and what their status is.
For shared calendar views, Timewatch adds the ability to filter appointments to show just meetings, and provides AI analytics and reporting.
None of these features are available in Outlook alone.
What information is available for reporting?
All of the information available in Outlook is available for reporting from Timewatch. Appointments, duration, subject, AI groupings, categories, Outlook appointment types, meetings, meeting attendees and more.
Why can't we just export Outlook data?
You can export Outlook calendar data in older versions of Outlook, but presently exporting data is not possible with New Outlook. However, even in exporting calendar data there are a number of issues to be aware of.
First, you’d need to have everyone export their calendar data, and in a timely manner as the data is time sensitive. The data in employee calendars could be imported into a database to make reporting possible. This process would need to repeated every day or week as data is constantly changing, so there is a lot of manual work involved.
Timewatch overcomes these issues as it provides access to this data in real-time so it is always up to date and it does this automatically.
What does Outlook AI Calendar Analysis provide?
Outlook appointments and meetings do not provide any way to specify what the appointment or meeting is for, which customer it relates to, the project involved or the purpose of the meeting. This is important data companies tell us they desperately need.
Timewatch’s Outlook AI Analytics analyses the appointment and meeting details to help companies make sense of these appointments and meetings. Our AI analyses data on the appointments to categorize them by common details employees enter when creating the appointment – the subject, categories etc.
How easy is it to setup, administer and use?
There is effort required to setup the system and train the AI aspects of the system, but Timewatch includes the services needed for this.
Once setup, you just need to have your users connect to the system, and that’s it. The system then starts to learn your calendar data and starts providing the views and analytics you had us setup for you.
Other articles you may be interested in:
 | How Outlook Optics enhances OutlookOutlook Optics™ brings eye-opening analytics, team calendar views and even centralized calendar management to your Outlook implementation. You can dig deep, analyze employee activities, team utilization, productivity, future capacity, etc., analytics impossible with Outlook alone. |
 | How Outlook AI helps companies analyze what employees are working onMany companies using Microsoft Outlook want to know what everyone is working on, but don’t want to burden employees with timesheets. What they need a simple way to see what people are working on using their Outlook calendars without disrupting anyone’s daily work. This is exactly what our Outlook Optics and Microsoft Azure AI provides. |
 | Timesheet entry from OutlookOrganizations that use Outlook can automate timesheet entry with OutlookTime® which automatically completes timesheets as users manage their calendars. Timewatch’s Outlook timesheet is the perfect nonprofit software and as an upgrade for Timecard for Outlook. |
