AI Scheduling for MS Outlook Calendar

In their 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft and LinkedIn wrote, “The data is in: 2024 is the year AI at work gets real.” 

Microsoft isn’t just talking the talk; they’re weaving artificial intelligence (AI) into their products to boost worker productivity, including AI-powered calendar functionality. 

In this post, we’ll share:

• A quick overview of Microsoft Copilot, an AI tool you can use to help you manage your calendar and schedule meetings
• And our alternative—Clockwise AI Scheduler (now in beta) for Microsoft Outlook (and Google Calendar) users

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Can an AI-powered calendar schedule meetings?

An AI-powered calendar, or AI calendar assistant, blends artificial intelligence with scheduling mastery to help calendar users manage their day more efficiently. Many of these tools can schedule meetings automatically, like a personal assistant.

In a recent article, we overviewed how AI calendar assistants work. They automate scheduling by marrying artificial intelligence technologies and your workday preferences. This foundation helps us understand Microsoft Copilot and AI Scheduler. 

Here’s a brief recap: AI-powered calendar assistants (like Microsoft Copilot and AI Scheduler) are automatic schedulers that remove the hassle of back-and-forth emails, Slacks, Google Calendar browsing (talking about you, Find a Time feature), and overall frustration by scheduling your meetings for you. They eliminate the time it takes for you to manually surf through calendars or provide your availability to others to schedule a meeting. 

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How does the Microsoft Outlook AI scheduling assistant work?

Meet Microsoft Outlook’s scheduling assistant, Copilot. Microsoft integrated Copilot into Microsoft 365 tools, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more, to unlock productivity and creativity. Take a deeper dive into what Copilot for Microsoft 365 can do for you. 

Copilot in Outlook helps users manage their email inbox and, most importantly, their time. 

Since Copilot lives in Outlook, all you have to do is open it, and then you can prompt Copilot to help you schedule a meeting. Copilot will guide you through creating a meeting invite, which includes setting up the invite, adding attendees, and finding a time to meet that works well for everyone on the meeting list. 

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You can select the best options for you and your meeting by entering prompts and choosing from the time slots provided.

Other things to know about Copilot:

• It understands requests for meeting titles if you are specific (e.g., Schedule a monthly marketing team meeting) 
• Based on the information it knows from Microsoft Graph data, Copilot can also suggest relevant people, files, and times 
• Copilot will also help you draft a meeting agenda if you’d like 

The best part about Copilot is that it's easy to access if you are a Microsoft user since it lives in Outlook. While Copilot is great for helping schedule meetings, Clockwise AI Scheduler can do the same (and so much more!) 

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Try Clockwise AI Scheduler for Microsoft Outlook calendar

‍Clockwise AI Scheduler is the first AI scheduling assistant that lets anyone delegate calendar management. 

By honoring your work preferences and quickly and reliably handling the messy job of scheduling, Clockwise AI Scheduler is smarter, faster, and better at company-wide calendar management than any human assistant ever could be.

What sets Clockwise AI Scheduler apart from Copilot is that it leverages innovations in large language models (LLMs) and the power of natural language processing. With a dash of magic, AI Scheduler streamlines the scheduling process and finds times to meet without sacrificing how you like to work (or the amount of deep work time you need). 

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Here are some examples of how AI Scheduler can help you schedule meetings:

• Find a meeting time when there’s nothing available on the calendar 
• Schedule, reschedule, and cancel meetings, no matter how urgent or complex
• Schedule in bulk (e.g., Schedule 15-minute weekly 1:1s with everyone on my team except for on Fridays) 
• Create scheduling links to share your availability outside of your organization (including links with pooled availability for group meetings)
• Store preferences and context that you want the AI Scheduler to remember for future requests 

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The best part? You still control your workday. When you share your preferences with us, like your meeting and working hours, when you want to eat lunch, if you’d like us to hold travel time, and how much Focus Time you need, we protect them. When you use AI Scheduler, we won’t help you find only the next available whitespace on the calendar for your meeting; we’ll help you schedule the meeting without sacrifice. 

Clockwise AI Scheduler is more effective than tools like Copilot because you can mark your meetings as flexible. This allows us to suggest times to reschedule them when we need to help you create space for a new meeting. We’ll only ever reschedule meetings you mark flexible, and we never reschedule anything without your permission. 

Put your schedule on autopilot. Download Clockwise and use AI Scheduler for Outlook today.