Here is a question for you.
Are your employees spending time creating and updating tasks in Dynamics CRM and calendars individually? If your answer is yes, then it means such repetitive tasks are hampering your employee’s productivity.
The second issue employees often face is scheduling a meeting and later realizing that some employees have other commitments. Or you might successfully schedule a meeting but the employees forget about it or join in late. Such situations can be uncomfortable for your employees.
If your employees are facing such issues that means you need a calendar that can help employees keep their schedule on track and the real time reminders to ensure they never miss out on anything.
All you need to do is integrate a Dynamics 365 Calendar with your Dynamics 365 and it will shower you with amazing benefits.
First, let us understand what Dynamics calendar is and then understand the benefits of it.
What is the Dynamics 365 Calendar?
Dynamics 365 Calendar is a plugin that integrates with the Dynamics CRM. The main purpose of using this plugin is to manage meetings, tasks, and activities efficiently.
As the plugin integrates with the CRM, all the entities of the CRM are visible in the calendar and useful while scheduling a meeting related to that task.
Research shows that senior employees/upper management spends 50% of their time in meetings. It is obvious that they would be investing time in scheduling the meetings as well. Almost 51% of employees have confirmed that the number of meetings are increasing.
It is clear from the above facts that to improve employee’s productivity and save time that goes behind planning rather than executing, a calendar plugin can work wonders.
But why use a calendar plugin and not a separate calendar?
Integrating a calendar plugin with your CRM might reduce some of your meetings that you usually do to get the task status updates from your team. Calendar brings transparency and a clear view to everyday schedules. Additionally, it fetches data from the CRM,, so any updates in the CRM reflect in the calendar and vice versa.
It has some amazing features that can benefit you and your employees in managing their schedules like never before. Let’s have a look at the benefits the Dynamics calendar brings.
8 Benefits of Dynamics 365 Calendar
We will discuss benefits one at a time and the features that make it possible:
Easy Task Management
Managers always struggle while planning a meeting as they need to know the schedule of all their team members to finalize a time that works for all. Similarly, while assigning the task to their team members, sometimes they might assign the task to someone whose hands are already full.
Managers go through these situations almost daily. They have to do constant back and forth to make things right, consuming a lot of their time. Also, assigning a task to someone who already has a full day task can leave a bad impression of the lead and organization.
Scheduling a meeting and assigning a task can be easier with the Dynamics Calendar plugin. It has this feature where all the tasks are visible. You do not have to manually add the task as the calendar is integrated with the CRM and fetches entities from there. With the drag and drop feature, it is easier to schedule a meeting or assign a task. In case of rescheduling, simply drag the meeting/task to the time slot you want. It avoids the need to re-enter the data all over again. The chances of overlapping schedules also nullifies with the calendar plugin.
Shareable Calendar
To ask everyone for their schedule to know what they are working on or to know their free time to schedule a meeting can be overwhelming. Sometimes, you might not get timely replies or it is possible that you would disturb them during an important meeting. A junior employee might struggle to find the right time to get some guidance from their senior.
With a shareable calendar feature in the Dynamics calendar, it is possible to share calendars between the employees of the organization. So, everyone you share your calendar with can view your schedule and tasks.
So, if anyone is planning to set a meeting or assign a task, they can simply go through that employee's calendar. Employees at senior positions are often busy in meetings, so they can share their calendars with the rest to find a sweet spot to get their answers.
Improved Resource Management
Using multiple tools for different tasks is time consuming. Especially for managers who handle a team, keeping track of their tasks, leaves, meetings, etc. can be challenging.
For example, you use a different tool to apply for leaves and the manager has approved the leave for that person. For assigning tasks, you might be using a different tool. It might happen that by mistake the manager assigns some important task to the employee who is on leave and realizes it at the end of the day.
To avoid using multiple tools, the calendar plugins are the best. The Dynamics calendar has this feature where employees can add leaves and the managers can approve the same from the calendar. So, when they are assigning tasks or scheduling a meeting, if they choose the employee on leave it would reflect that they are on leave.
This plugin simplifies handling teams for the managers, no matter how big it is.
Multiple Calendar
Wouldn't it be messier to have some customers/visitor’s whole day schedule added to your schedule? You might have a new joinee or someone under training for whom you have to make tasks. You cannot have all that mixed up with your calendar. It would be difficult to keep track of your activities.
With a Dynamics calendar, you do not need to worry about this. It allows you to make multiple calendars. You can either save it for yourself or share it with the respective employee.
Having a clean calendar gives clarity on your productivity. You can switch calendars to see the other calendar and it would provide real time notification as and when required.
Fully Configurable
Not everyone wants to work with default settings. Having some control to choose colors or view of the calendar can satisfy everyone's choices. This calendar is fully configurable. The view, color, entities, task or meeting colors, the user can configure all those things by themselves. They can choose the ones that work best for them.
Improves Productivity
When working remotely, the employees might not know who else is working on the same task that they are. So when they have questions, they often have to ask individuals to get the question answered. The time that goes behind asking would be enough to get their doubt cleared, if they knew exactly whom to ask and when to ask.
But with the Dynamics calendar, this is possible. The employees can see who else is assigned the same task as theirs. Hence, they can get their doubts cleared from the respective person. They can also see each other's status on what they are working on and whether it is complete or not.
For big teams, with teams working from different locations, this can help keep the team members on the same page. Everyone can fill their work reports from the same and update the status of their tasks. It reduces confusions between team members and thus, increases productivity.
Multiple Language Support
Let’s say your calendar is in French. What if the new joinee is not comfortable using French. How will they be able to use the calendar, if they cannot understand half of the things? The purpose of using the calendar plugin is to reduce the confusions and not increase one.
For companies having employees from all over the world, having a calendar that their employees would be using all day, in just one language is not efficient. It can hamper the employee’s productivity just because they are not able to understand what is written.
With Dynamics 365 Calendar, you can have multiple languages. You can add multiple languages to the calendar and simplify the struggle of using the tool.
Mobile Compatible
What if your employees have to visit clients outside of the workplace? In this case, using a personal computer system or laptop might not be ideal. Dynamics calendar is compatible with mobile devices. So, it gives flexibility to the users as it works with the same efficiency on mobile devices. The employees can keep the calendar updated on their phones and get real-time notifications, when there are any new changes, upcoming meetings, events, or any form of reminders. Not just mobile, it is compatible with tablets, web view or model driven apps.
Wrapping Up
Dynamics 365 calendar is a simple way to improve the efficiency of your employees. You would be able to track employee’s productivity based on the task they completed in the given deadline. On the other hand, the users can easily manage their tasks and activities and update the task status by themselves. To have all these benefits for yourself, you can look for a company that provides Dynamics 365 calendar plugin. They would help you with the whole integration process as well after that. If you are unsure about buying the product, try the free demo for a few days and check whether you like the product or not. This would ensure your money is invested at the right place.
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