It is important to stay alert and make sure that all activities are completed on schedule in spite of busy meetings. By making some small changes, you can improve your productivity, but managing multiple activities is a different story altogether.
There can be a higher possibility of mistakes and confusion in scheduling and managing multiple activities on the correct time schedule. Dynamics 365 Calendar comes in handy to overcome the issues related to managing multiple activities on time.
To get its benefits, all you need to do is to integrate Dynamics 365 Calendar into your Dynamics 365. Here’s all you need to know about Dynamics 365 Calendar:
What is Dynamics 365 Calendar?
Dynamics 365 Calendar is a plugin that can be integrated with Dynamics CRM, and it is used to efficiently organize meetings, activities, and tasks. All the CRM entities are displayed in the calendar as the plugin is integrated with the CRM. It is helpful for arranging meetings linked to that assignment.
According to research, meetings account for 50% of the time spent by senior staff and upper management. It makes sense that there would be some time invested in planning and scheduling the meeting. A calendar plugin can do wonders by increasing staff productivity and freeing up time for executing than just preparing for the project.
But why use a calendar plugin instead of a separate calendar? The number of meetings you hold to get task status updates from your team could be reduced if you integrate a calendar plugin with your CRM. The Dynamics 365 Calendar schedules with openness and clarity. It gets data from the CRM and allows adjustments in CRM to be reflected in the calendar and vice versa.
Types of Dynamics 365 Calendar
Dynamics 365 Calendar has two different features for different needs, and they are:
- Customer service calendars
There are calendars for customer service that measure the performance of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLAs are usually based on time-based Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like the duration of the initial response. Calculations to execute these agreements must take the customer service calendar into account when time constraints are limited.
Weekly timetables are specified in customer service calendars. Most of the time, holidays are occasions that don’t fit into those usual schedules. To give a detailed explanation of the time when customer services are available, a customer service calendar can be used with a holiday schedule.
- Service scheduling calendars
The default calendar type is used for service scheduling. The scheduling service ensures that all relevant calendar rules are taken into account while processing an appointment request. On the CalendarRule, you can define effort constraints apart from free and busy hours.
The effort can be used by a resource to carry out, provide, or repeat a specific service at a specific time. Similarly, each service outlines the amount of work that must be done from the necessary pool of resources to finish one unit of service within the allotted time. The scheduling engine calculates the proper time blocks for an appointment automatically.
Benefits of using Dynamics 365 Calendar
The benefits of using the Dynamics 365 Calendar are many, and important among them are given here:
- Automate appointment scheduling
Mentally planning to estimate the time required for each task doesn’t function effectively. There will be times when unexpected tasks will arise, consuming important time. It becomes difficult to keep track of everything and ensure a smooth operation.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Calendar offers a solution to prevent such problems. It allows you to create and manage several activities in a single location. Whether it is customer training, team meetings, or product launches, you can easily create tasks and add them to the calendar. You can also insert custom actions such as sending birthday greetings.
- Sharable calendar
It can be overwhelming to ask everyone for their schedule and know what they are working on or to know their free time for planning a meeting. You may not always get timely responses, or you may disturb them during an important meeting. A junior employee may struggle to find the right time to get advice from their superior.
Calendars can be shared among employees of the organization using the Dynamics calendar’s shareable calendar feature. So everyone with whom you share your calendar can see your schedule and tasks. If someone needs to schedule a meeting or assign a job, they can just look through that employee’s calendar.
- Reminders
If you have a meeting scheduled in 15 minutes and expect your calendar to remind you in advance, but it does not. After 10 minutes, you receive a call from a team member requesting you to join the meeting, which can be uncomfortable. Along with that, arriving late to a meeting can cause you to miss important topics and discussions.
To avoid such factors, Dynamics 365 Calendar allows you to make reminders for certain tasks or meetings. These reminders can be customized to suit needs, such as screen notifications or pop-ups, ensuring that you get timely alerts. You will also get email reminders and full information on the assignments or meetings.
- Better resource management
It takes time to use several tools for different jobs. Keeping track of work, leaves, meetings, and so on can be difficult for managers. For example, suppose you use a separate tool to apply for leaves, and the manager approves the leave. You may be using a different tool to assign jobs. It is possible that the management sends an important assignment to an employee who is on leave by mistake.
Calendar plugins are best for avoiding the use of several programs. Employees can add leaves to the Dynamics calendar, and managers can approve them from the calendar. If they choose the employee on leave when assigning work or scheduling a meeting, it will display that they are on leave.
- Control multiple tasks
You can manage various activities without having to switch between different calendars or applications. You can take care of everything in one location with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Calendar. Calendar 365 for Dynamics CRM provides you with all the tools you need. If you need to create, change, or delete tasks or meetings, assign or reassign tasks, filter data, or remind customers to follow up, Dynamics Calendar supports all.
Suppose you wish to see the activities that have been allocated to a specific user. The data can then be filtered based on the account, and you can even use more sophisticated filters to understand the tasks based on their priorities or status.
To add email addresses for recurring activities, just choose the recurring option. There is no need to send out a unique invitation each time. You can also use the CRM data to send follow-up reminders to customers who have forgotten about appointments straight from the calendar.
- Different language support
Your calendar is written in Spanish. What if the new employee finds it difficult to speak Spanish? If they can’t understand what’s going on, how can they use the calendar? Using the calendar plugin is meant to clear up these misunderstandings.
Having a calendar that their employees would use all day long in only one language is inefficient for businesses with international employees.
Due to their inability to understand what is written, it can reduce an employee’s productivity. You can use different languages with Dynamics 365 Calendar. The calendar can support several languages, which will make it easier to use.
- Configuration Options
It is possible that you have a lot of meetings and things to complete. To understand your activities in various ways, such as Gantt charts, lists, graphs, etc., you can use color-code. By setting up the dashboard, you can see a summary of the tasks that you and your team members have to do.
From selecting the entities and the data you want to see, you can even design a customized dashboard. You also have the option to create and save various calendar settings as templates that you can use as needed.
- Mobile compatibility
What happens if your staff needs to meet clients off-site? It might not be best in this situation to use a laptop or personal computer. Mobile devices can use the Dynamics calendar, as it operates equally well on mobile devices and allows consumers flexibility.
The staff can access the calendar on their phones and get instant notifications for any updates, meetings, or other reminders. It is compatible with tablets and model-driven apps apart from smartphones.
- Work summary
Knowing what tasks your team members are working on is not enough. You must know the status of each assignment in order to plan future operations. So, Calendar 365 for Dynamics CRM gives you a work report to view all the specifics for individual resources, such as activities you allocated, their completion status, and more. The work report improves visibility and management operations.
Final thoughts
The world is rapidly transforming to cloud-based solutions from in-house servers. To match the speed and be competitive in the field, you need to be fast and productive. As the efficiency of your business is a critical factor in customer experience, integrating Dynamics 365 Calendar with your CRM can improve business efficiency.
