This blog captures some calendar tips to help executive assistants and delegates better navigate their time management needs in the new Outlook.

1. Find time and request in-person event

When scheduling a meeting, click on ‘Find a time’ to easily find suitable time slots on the attendee’s calendars. You can view availability by hovering on the attendee icon. You can also request in-person attendance by turning on the ‘In-person event’ toggle on. You can still add a Teams meeting link for attendees who may not be able to join in person.

2. Use Scheduling Assistant

Use the scheduling assistant to easily find time for meetings. In the new Outlook, you can view the attendee time zones and schedule labels in the Scheduling Assistant. Note that attendee time zones are shown only if at least one attendee is in a different time.

3. Automatic online meetings

In the new Outlook, all meetings are online by default. The Teams meeting toggle is turned on when you add attendees to a meeting. Unlike classic Outlook, the Teams meeting link and details are added after the invite is sent. You can then view the meeting invite to see and copy the Teams meeting details. We are working to update this behavior and pre-create meeting links so you will see the experience match classic Outlook in future.

Note – you can update every meeting online setting from Settings> Calendar > Events and invitations and enable or disable ‘Add online meeting to all meetings’.
If you are using 3rd party online meeting providers like Zoom or Cisco WebEx, you will also see those as meeting provider options in this setting, provided you have their web add-in installed. Learn more every meeting online here.

4. Hide attendee list

You can now choose to hide the attendee list from being visible to users who receive the meeting invite. When creating a new meeting, select ‘Response options’ and click on ‘Hide attendee list’

5. Attendees can add rooms

In the new Outlook, attendees can add rooms by forwarding the meeting invite to the relevant rooms. The meeting room will then be visible to all attendees.

6. Edit events in a series

The new Outlook for Windows has the following options for editing a meeting series –

This event – this will only update the selected instance of the meeting series.
This and all following events – this will only make changes to the selected and following instances of the meeting series and the older meeting instances will not be changed. This option does not exist in classic Outlook for Windows.
All events in the series – this will update all events in the meeting series.

7. Duplicate a meeting

Right click on an event in the calendar surface and select ‘Duplicate event’ to it. You can also do this from the meeting form ribbon.

8. Add multiple Time Zones in calendar

Easily manage meetings across different time zones in new Outlook. New Outlook allows you to add up to 20 time zones in the calendar, whereas classic Outlook allows adding only 3 time zones.

9. Use executive’s categories in calendar

Right click on an event in the calendar view and click ‘Categorize’ to apply executive’s categories. We plan to allow executive admins to manage executive’s categories in future.

10. Receive shared calendar notifications

In the new Outlook, users can opt to receive notifications on changes to events in the shared calendar. This capability is extended to both the executive and executive assistant/delegate. You can select the calendars you want to opt in for notifications from Settings> Calendar > Shared Calendars> Calendar updates.

11. ‘Don’t send response’ RSVP tracked

In classic Outlook, if the user chooses ‘Do not send response’ while RSVPing, the organizer will not be able to track that individual RSVP.

However, in the new Outlook, if the user unchecks ‘Email organizer’ while RSVPing, even though there will not be a visible response email sent to the organizer, the organizer will still be able track that RSVP as long as the organizer and the RSVPing attendee are in the same M365 tenant (or organization).
We plan to support tracking across different tenants in future.

12. Preserve declined meetings on the calendar and RSVP’d meetings in inbox

Preserve declined meetings on the calendar so that you can still be aware of it and update RSVP later if needed. This can be enabled by selecting Settings > Calendar > Events and invitations and clicking the ‘Save declined events’ checkbox.

Meetings that have been RSVP’d to, can also be retained in the inbox so that you can easily find them later. This can be done from Settings> Calendar > Events and invitations > Invitations from other people and selecting the ‘Delete invitations from inbox after responding’.

These settings will have to be enabled on the executive’s for them to be respected in the delegate calendar and inbox folder respectively.

13. Decline but follow a meeting

The new ‘RSVP option allows you to decline a meeting but still have access to the meeting chat, meeting recording and meeting notes. This is a great way to stay informed about discussions that you or your executives are unable to join.

This feature is rolling out so some users may not see it yet.

Share feedback

We encourage you to try new Outlook and share your feedback. You can submit feedback on the new Outlook experience from Help > Feedback. Please mention – “I am an EA” Or “I am a delegate” when adding comments.

To stay updated with the latest features in new Outlook, follow the roadmap.

This guide will also be published as a support article that will be linked here once available.

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