Outlook time management

What can be done with a help of MS Outlook?

This software is among the most popular individual tools on the market. Popularity of time management using Outlook is explained by the fact that a great number of users consider its functionality as the golden mean between extremely complicated project management products such as MS Project, and just too simple tools such as Google to-do list. Of course, it appears quite satisfactory for the most of individuals who need to manage their personal and professional tasks, as it includes all the essential capabilities (low-level functions):

• Grouping and sub-grouping (categorizing) tasks;
• Prioritizing tasks (selecting multi-level task priorities);
• Scheduling tasks (setting task start and finish dates);
• Tracking tasks (controlling task statuses);

Essential time management features of MS Outlook making it popular:

Due to these low-level  functions, users employing this product get almost a complete package of tools which are necessary to drive effective practice on planning tasks and efforts according to any of proven methodologies and techniques such as GTD. Quite simple interface and mentioned functions make time management  really popular, so tons of shared tips are available on the Web. Actually, all the previously mentioned low-level functions can be explained as the following high-level features ensuring good time management and productive Outlook applying:

• Forming up dated and columned to-do lists displaying your actual, upcoming, procrastinated, or themed tasks;
• Using Calendar mode with customizable time-grid for checking your personal or professional agendas for current and upcoming days, weeks and months;
• Setting up task-trees (workflow hierarchies) to make your tasks more specific and to help you focusing on certain categories of your commitments;
• Qualifying your records as appointments and tasks;

Issues of MS Outlook time reporting:

More problems may appear when you want to establish MS Outlook for a group of collaborators. In order to arrange job tracking you should buy and install multiple personal licenses for your teammates (each person should get his own software license), and also buy and install expensive Microsoft Exchange Server. All these require considerable IT-investments and serious IT-wise efforts which make MS Outlook time tracking system an unadvisable decision for small and medium business which tries to decrease IT infrastructure costs.

Analogues of MS Outlook time management:

This tool is called VIP Task Manager and it helps you to manage time and tasks to increase your organization’s ability to succeed. Teaching your employees to use this tool is even easier than MS training as VIP Task Manager is supported by a rich collection of tutorials and articles. While functionality of this product is very similar to MS Project, its collaboration technology is much easier and cheaper to establish as it doesn’t need any expensive and complicated server solutions, but can be established over your corporate network just in a few minutes, also it can work equally well via the Internet (for this your server computer should have outer IP address). To have more information, please take a look through these comparison reviews.