Microsoft is supercharging Outlook Calendar with two new intelligent features today, along with improvements to some of the existing features. First up, Microsoft is bringing the advanced scheduling feature powered by Cortana to more users. The feature is actually provided by Microsoft’s Calendar.help service which was built using technology from a Genee — a company Microsoft acquired last year. Using Calendar.help, users can simply CC Cortana ([email protected]) whenever they are sending an email with meeting details, and Cortana will automatically add that to her calendar.
Microsoft is also officially launching Family calendars today, but that feature started rolling out back in April. Family calendars on Outlook, as the name suggests, lets you make a shared calendar which anyone in your family can edit or add events to. Microsoft is also rolling out an improved share feature for calendars that gives users increased control over the permissions for shared documents. Outlook can also now detect dinner reservations and other similar events in your emails and it will now show options that will let you add that event to your Calendar with a single click.
There’s also a couple of other changes being rolled out to Outlook Calendar today, which you can find below.
- Microsoft Family calendar—Keep your family up-to-date with a single place for all of your events that everyone in the family can access.
- Improved calendar sharing—Easily share your Outlook calendar with anyone who has an Outlook.com or Office 365 account.
- Expanded support for events in your email—Outlook now automatically adds dinner reservations and other events to your calendar.
- Expanded support for Interesting calendars—Interesting calendars now supports more languages, teams and sports.
- Cortana can schedule your remote meetings—Stop emailing back and forth to set up a meeting. Sign up for the Calendar.help Preview and ask Cortana to schedule a phone or conference call for you.
All of these new features are available to all Outlook.com users, and they start rolling out today.