 "New Outlook.com Calendar puts user in control of his schedule")
Microsoft is now rolling out a refreshed Calendar experience for Outlook.com. The redesigned Calendar will reach everyone this week.
David Dennis,Principal Program Manager Lead, Outlook.com Calendar, says that the Calendar has been redesigned to put the user in control of his schedule. The redesigned Calendar on Outlook.com focuses primarily on a user’s events and appointments, what it calls optimising “content over chrome”. Among the changes to the Calendar, Dennis says that navigating and getting information into one’s Calendar is now faster. Users can add or edit events with a single click. To enter an event, users have to drag their mouse across the time and date range of their choice. They can even add tasks without opening a new page or quickly go to a particular day by clicking the date.
The redesigned Calendar on Outlook.com
He goes on to add that sticking to their design philosophy “to have a consistent experience that adds up to more than just the individual parts, the redesigned Calendar fits naturally into the same family with your inbox, address book and SkyDrive.”
Next up is the ability of the Calendar to work across smartphones and tablets. Outlook.com uses Exchange ActiveSync to sync Mail, Calendar and Address Book on a user’s smartphone and tablet, in Outlook 2013 and with the Mail, Calendar and People apps on tablets and PCs running Windows 8. In addition to this, users can use the Outlook Connector to intergrate their Calendar with the older versions of the Outlook desktop software.
The Calendar on Outlook.com fits into the same family, like your inbox
Also, now users can connect their Microsoft account to services like Skype, LinkedIn and Facebook to have their friends’ birthdays added automatically to their Calendar. Why only events and schedules? Dennis says that users will now be able to see weather forecasts for many regions and holidays for a growing list of places. Using iCalShare, users can get several holiday, sports, and other calendars that they can subscribe to with a click. Users also have the option of importing calendars (.ics files) or subscribe to public calendars from other services. Interestingly, users have the option of importing their Google Calendar to their Outlook.com Calendar by clicking on the Import link in the header.
Dennis confirms that the privacy settings of the Calendar has been set to private by default. However, users can share their calendars with others by clicking the “Share” menu in the header. Sharing your calendar allows others to access it, but since you’re the owner, you can decide the ones who can edit and add events.
Some other changes at a glance..
Additionally, users can chose to share their calendar privately with specific people by entering their email address or by clicking on “Get a link” and then emailing or posting that link wherever they want.
To stay at the top of all the changes being made on a shared calendar, users can subscribe to change notifications. This way, users will be notified about any changes made to the shared calendar via email. As for the number of shared calendars that one can have, Dennis says there is no limit.
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