Outlook

Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is essentially a personal information manager and is available as part of the Microsoft Office suite. It is used most often as a program for managing emails but it can do so much more than that. It also manages your contacts, calendar, tasks and events so that all this information is kept safe and brought to your attention when required. Here are some of the key features of Microsoft Outlook that make it such an essential part of any organization:

Email

Email management is what Microsoft Outlook is known for. It offers a myriad of options that you can customize so that Microsoft Outlook works for you. You can create "rules" so that emails are screened and acted on accordingly, even without needing you to go through each one individually. These rules can be enforced according to keywords in the email, where the email is coming from (sender), email size, or emails containing certain types of information or attachments. This saves invaluable time so you can focus on more important tasks. They can also be managed in groups (like group emails amongst team members) or individually.

Journal

The Journal feature of Microsoft Outlook will automatically keep track of communications that you choose that are related to specific contacts. The actions are then presented to you in a timeline view. This lets you see a chronological overview of your communication with your contacts. The type of communications that you can track include formal document items like emails, memos and calendar events, or even informal items like phone call records or bits of information noted down during a conversation.

Meetings

With Microsoft Outlook, you can schedule online or face-to-face meetings by simply sending an email. Your email will be sent to all recipients with electronic reminders, RSVP options, notes required for the meeting and, if you decide to extend that opportunity, your attendees can propose alternate meeting times if they cannot attend. Your calendar will be marked accordingly so you can view the anticipated attendance to your meeting and any matters that you need to consider before the meeting.

Contacts

All of your contacts' information is handled with a very intelligent manner. In Microsoft Outlook, you will find a dedicated field for almost every kind of information about your contacts, ranging from certificates and scans of business cards to attaching meeting notices and work tasks to contacts so you can easily find the person associated with a specific job (e.g. Sales people or HR staff). You can also use this feature to send quick status reports about tasks assigned to you.

Microsoft Outlook allows the user to spend less time on things that would traditionally eat up time in the day, like having to manually schedule meetings at a time that that works for everyone or going from person to person to collect RSVPs and updates on tasks. Now, all this is taken care of by Microsoft Outlook while you focus on more important things.