Outlook not a “Productivity App”

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Outlook just is not as useful as it should be (for what you have to pay for MS Office). Here’s something I’d like to see that, as far as I can tell, Outlook does not do but should. (If there’s an add-in that does this, please respond): An Outlook menu button that launches a built in app that grabs the Calendar schedule information for my 15 staff so I can see at a glance who is scheduled to work today, who is off on vacation, etc. Then, with one click, create an email message I can send to all staff as the morning “Staff Update” — now everyone knows who is in the office, who is teleworking, who is off sick or on vacation.

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grabs the Calendar schedule information for my 15 staff so I can see at a glance who is scheduled to work today, who is off on vacation, etc. Then, with one click, create an email message I can send to all staff as the morning “Staff Update” — now everyone knows who is in the office, who is teleworking, who is off sick or on vacation.

Not exactly what you want, but Outlook has a Group Schedule tool you may want to review: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP012303431033.aspx
If all of your employees use this tool, there’s no need to send an email – they can call up the View and see for themselves.

For a list of third party tools, see: http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/scheduleall.asp

If necessary, the email you want could be coded.

(Outlook is not a productivity application {I have found that an employee present at the job site is not necessarily productive}, it’s a personal information manager.)

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John,
Thanks. That’s a nice feature that will be useful. Is there a way you know of to put a button on the toolbar to a Group Schedule? It would be even nicer if the “Current View” could be configured to show a Group Schedule on the Calendar space.

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If someone knows a better way please post it. All I can find is this menu cheat to pop it (in Outlook 2003), and you must be in a calendar view:

Sub PopGrpSchedMenu()
If ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder.DefaultItemType = olAppointmentItem Then ActiveExplorer.CommandBars.FindControl(ID:=7002).Execute
End Sub

Put the macro in a standard module, create the menu button manually and add wherever, depending on your version.

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