The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

How should we meet, really?

That is no longer the case. Nowa­days, it’s dif­fi­cult for many to know whether they should book a phys­i­cal meet­ing or if they need to do it dig­i­tal­ly. Will the col­leagues be in the office or work­ing from home on that spe­cif­ic day in a few weeks?

On a solu­tion dis­cov­ery journey

At least, read­ers have been ask­ing me late­ly what the best way to eas­i­ly show col­leagues on the cal­en­dar when they will be work­ing from home is so that it’s eas­i­er to book the right kind of meet­ing. There­fore, I have dug into the issue. I have searched for new, smart cal­en­dar fea­tures in the most com­mon cal­en­dar apps, I have imag­ined that there is an add-on app to use, and I have exper­i­ment­ed with dif­fer­ent solu­tions in my test environment.

I have found an easy solu­tion in Out­look but not much more, so let me also share the solu­tion that, in my opin­ion, seems to be the best if you don’t use Out­look. With that said, I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in what solu­tions I have missed that you have found, so please tell me.

Do this

The solu­tion for show­ing col­leagues when you plan to work from home for you who don’t use Out­look requires noth­ing more than the cal­en­dar app you have.

For the recur­ring day(s) you plan to work from home, cre­ate a new cal­en­dar book­ing and make it a full-day event.

For the book­ing title, write ​“Work­ing from home” or some­thing similar.

The cal­en­dar book­ing will not block any time in your cal­en­dar if you set it to ​”free”, so you will still be avail­able for meet­ings. How­ev­er, the sched­ul­ing assis­tant will make the book­ing vis­i­ble to any­one plan­ning to invite you to a meet­ing so they will quick­ly see that you will not be in the office that day.

But, if you use Out­look, click the small plus sign in the top right cor­ner of ​”the day”. That’s where you indi­cate your work plan. Set the loca­tion to ​”Remote” and you are done.

Clear­er and easier

Show­ing your col­leagues where you plan to work and when will make it eas­i­er for them to find a meet­ing time that works for every­one who needs to attend. I had hoped that the sched­ul­ing assis­tant would have a func­tion to find the next avail­able time when all par­tic­i­pants are in the office, but that is not yet avail­able (at least, from what I have seen).

How do you do it?

I assume, how­ev­er, that there are more clever solu­tions to this prob­lem, so email me and tell me about the ones you have found or come up with. I am always just as hap­py to get tips from my readers.

(Have you noticed how a cir­cu­lar cal­en­dar gives you a reas­sur­ing overview?)