It so happens that many medium and large businesses work predominantly with Microsoft products. The full office suite is installed on almost all employee workstations, where it is needed and not needed. The manager’s calendar is maintained using Outlook, which is part of the same office suite.
On the one hand, it is a universal solution for companies of any level, but on the other hand, it is a monster tool, which is very difficult to understand not only for users, but also for system administrators. Organizing file storage for all emails alone is a real headache.
But there are more clear and simple solutions for convenient managing the calendar of managers and employees. That’s exactly the kind of thing we’re going to talk about now.
What Do You Need to Organize Your Manager’s Working Hours?
Let’s consider what tasks should be solved by a specialized software complex inside the enterprise. Usually, such software is used exclusively for the work of bosses, directors, heads of departments and other representatives of top management, as they are engaged in:
- Planning their actions and the actions of subordinate employees for one day, week, month, quarter, year, etc.;
- Setting tasks and goals;
- Controlling their fulfillment and checking compliance with the plan;
- Scheduling of shifts, vacations, and weekend schedules;
- Keeping records of the number of days and hours worked (on the basis of which wages are calculated);
Time management is the most important responsibility of any manager. Managers also have other tasks, including evaluating labor efficiency, hiring and firing subordinates, keeping reports, controlling scrap/due time (if the unit’s activity concerns production or sales), stages of the production process, and others.
How not to «burn» from all these responsibilities and do everything on time? That’s right, you need to automate everything you can. The idea is not new. The main problem is finding the most suitable tools for this.
What Tools Might Be Used
The first format for working with tasks and planning is the old-fashioned way — in a notebook. Some people are actually more comfortable that way. Thought about it, wrote it down, sketched it, closed the notebook and… forgot. And this is already a problem. The greatest number of failures of managers of any level occurs because of tasks that have been safely forgotten. After all, the notebook can not remind of itself: buzz in your pocket with a notification from your smartphone, call you on the phone with claims or ping a pop-up window on your work computer.
The second option is office managers. Only a properly trained person can be better than a human being. Office managers (secretaries, executive assistants) can partially unload their boss. Plan a meeting, coordinate the details of it, send out notices to everyone, take care of other important things, etc. But in fact, office managers often have a lot of other tasks, which is why they themselves resort to the use of planning software. And not all managers can afford to hire such an assistant.
Finally, the most popular category of tools is task managers or organizer programs. Usually it is offline software or partially standalone software, which is installed on the workplace of the manager and helps him in many matters. Microsoft Outlook is one such an organizer.
Pros of such programs:
- They help in scheduling cases and matching them with employee/manager’s work schedule.
- They can automatically notify about an upcoming event (by a special message or a letter to a specified address).
- Ensure coordination of common events: meetings, video conferences.
- They store all necessary information about performed and planned actions. You won’t lose or forget them, you can use them for reporting, grading, etc.
- They often help with document management. The same Outlook is a mail program. With its help, you can send a message or task to the right employee or a whole list of recipients, attach files (presentations, documents, tables), and get feedback.
Cons of classic organizers:
- Often one-sided execution. For example, some programs work only with the calendar, others — only with the tasks of one employee, etc. They do not have a complex structure and complete coherence of the constituent elements.
- Such software needs to be installed on PCs (which means expensive equipment, appropriate instruction on work and security measures), regularly updated, compatibility issues monitored, tested before implementation, etc.
- It is very rare if such software knows how to integrate with employees’ personal devices. Therefore, notifications are bound only to the workplace (PC or laptop). You can’t take them with you on the road.
- High cost. Not even so much cost as capital expenditure. To launch all workplaces, you need to buy a set of licenses for all of them at once, not counting the cost of equipment. And this is a serious budget.
Only specialized, comprehensive SaaS services can provide maximum convenience in managing your work calendar. For example, when the relevant software runs in your infrastructure (on a rented or on your own server) or in the provider’s infrastructure.
- You can switch to a subscription model (payment will be made in smaller installments, but more often, based on the results of reporting periods, for example, for a month or two years). You can avoid capital investments altogether.
- The tool is specialized, so the tasks of the manager and subordinates are solved more comprehensively. Not only managers, but also their employees will be able to work in the system (they will be able to accept tasks electronically, report on their fulfillment, etc.). Top managers can monitor general trends and more global processes, assign tasks, add new performers and provide necessary resources. Control becomes more transparent and visible.
- The availability of mobile applications and web-interfaces eliminates the need for mandatory equipment of each employee’s workplace.
- There is no need to update and test anything. The service works ready-made and with guaranteed resources (even if you choose a configuration to install on your server, the environment will be updated centrally).
Head Calendar Keeping: an Example With Projecto
We are not saying that Projecto will solve absolutely every problem. No, this is impossible even in theory. But our service is easily adaptable to enterprises of different sizes and comprehensively covers many tasks of managers, which relate to planning, time management, reporting on tasks and control of their fulfillment. Here you can also keep calendars of employees and managers according to a set pattern.
Projecto has ready-made mobile apps, so notifications about upcoming events and new tasks will come instantly with guaranteed delivery to the recipient.
You can rent our SaaS infrastructure or host the software on your own server (if your business processes require it).
So, what features Projecto provides for working with calendars:
- There are no requirements for mandatory installation of client software. You only need a modern browser to access the interface.
- You get a visual display of all current, planned and completed events (to-do’s, tasks, activities, etc.) for the day (Today section), week or month.
- Events for the whole day are displayed in a separate area so as not to clutter the working field of the calendar. Business trips are also displayed separately (so that the manager can take into account the physical absence of a particular employee).
- Several types of calendars are allowed: personal, working (for several participants) and corporate (for all participants at once). Accordingly, events will be displayed for all participants at once when they are linked with the required calendar. In a special menu, you can hide the display of events from different types of calendars (to focus on one of them).
- Events can be recurring or one-time events. The recurrence cycle can be set very flexibly — for any type of task.
- For more fine-tuning, you can add participants, attach projects, tags, notes, resources, tasks, documents and files to events.
- Each event can be discussed in a separate chat, prioritized and linked to a location.
- To make sure no one misses anything, you can create reminders: by date, for a specific period before the event, or with a link to days of the week or month. Notifications will be displayed in a special menu, sent to email or triggered in the mobile app.
- In the history, it is easy to track the status of the event: whether it took place or not, perhaps it was canceled.
- Each calendar event can have its own agenda. The number of items is not limited in any way. You can set some items in the list to private status, convert them into tasks, or mark them as solved to save them in the history.
- There is a possibility to compare calendars of different employees. To do this, you should add one or several users in the calendar selection window.
- To create a new event, just click with the pointer on any free cell with time.
- You can move events just by clicking and dragging them to a new time slot.
You won’t need any integrations, simply because all the necessary functionality is already inside the system — from personal employee cards to automatic reports and kanban boards.
It’s easier to see it in action once than to hear about the possibilities a hundred times. That’s why we strongly recommend you to try our demo version.
