Outlook Calendars for Confluence by yasoon

Weird things can happen in outer space due to gravitational forces. For example, you could end up like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar, who landed on a planet experiencing extreme dilation and later found out that an hour spent there equaled seven years on Earth. The time slippage didn’t affect his career too much (he was a farmer), but what if he was running his own business instead? His company would probably have gone bust with his absence.

Hypothetically, had he had access to his Earth calendar, he would have gotten updates every other minute and realized something was amiss with the planet’s time flow. Unfortunately, he probably had access to a different calendar (Outlook) than the one his Earth company was using (Confluence), and any updates made by his staff were only visible to the Confluence calendar.

While businesses won’t have to worry about supermassive black holes or time dilation anytime soon, one problem they do face is poor calendar management. For example, businesses working in the Microsoft 365 and Atlassian environment often use both Outlook and Confluence Calendars, which can lead to inefficient redundancies. Team members need to maintain and update multiple calendars separately, which is time-consuming and annoying.

Is there a more efficient way to manage your calendars?

Say hello to Outlook Calendars for Confluence. Based on Microsoft 365, it stores all your calendar data in a single location and is fully integrated with all your Office products— i.e, Microsoft Teams. It also reliably updates your data in real time. Let’s see how smoothly your Confluence calendars can support you and your team in your daily work.

Applying For Vacation Leave Is a Breeze Let’s say you’re working at Matthew McConaughey’s hypothetical company. He’s been absent for 14 days and you’re wanting to apply for vacation leave. However, the vacation calendar is centrally managed by him in a separate data silo, so you aren’t sure who is off during the time and whether it’s a good time to apply or not.

If Matthew were using Outlook Calendars for Confluence, he could have added Outlook Calendar data to the relevant project-specific Confluence pages. All he had to do was add the calendar macro, choose the relevant holiday calendars in Outlook, and then give your team access to the holiday calendar in Confluence. The dates are neatly displayed, and you can easily plan your leave accordingly.

Better Service and Support Say that you’re the Head of Customer Support in Matthew McConaughey’s hypothetical company. How do you ensure that the wheels don’t fall off the cart in his absence? The key is better time management. What is your team’s current workload? Are there any support tickets waiting to be assigned ? Are there support tickets with upcoming, critical due dates? All those dates are usually saved in Jira. Meanwhile, you almost exclusively use Outlook to communicate with customers and colleagues, and organize schedules and appointments, just like any other companies and teams do. But then again, this means different data silos and sources of information (Jira and Outlook).

Outlook Calendars for Confluence lets you combine the data and share everything in one team calendar.

Combining Jira issue dates and Outlook calendar information is the game-changer you need. It saves time by showing what is most important and which team members can solve the issue fastest.

Guess who’s getting promoted when Matthew gets back.

Improved IT Project Planning Let’s say Matthew McConaughey is also Head of IT in his hypothetical company.

Before leaving on his intergalactic mission, he could have used Outlook Calendars for Confluence to ensure his IT management team would be able to run smoothly in his absence.

Confluence calendars already do a great job of translating abstract planning dates into a neat visual overview. By adding accurate Microsoft 365-based calendar data, the existing Confluence pages in his company can now reveal potential dependencies, give individuals clarity on how they can plan their activities, and show how and when things can be built.

Calendars synced across tools using other apps are not always up to date because the data is not exchanged in real time. Especially in IT project planning, reliable data is needed to plan efficiently. Now, his team members don’t have to switch between programs or even copy and paste information from one tool to the other, which means no information is lost on the way, and he can go gallivanting across the universe in peace.

Manage Your Calendars the Smart Way Outlook Calendars for Confluence can benefit your business in many ways, even if you aren’t planning any intergalactic travels anytime soon. Applying for leaves is easier, as is IT project planning. All calendar data is visible in Confluence, in real-time and without duplicate calendar management. Your team now has full visibility of all project-related appointments in Confluence. This helps them to stay on track, even if their manager is halfway across the galaxy!

Bonus: You can also embed your Microsoft Teams calendars in Confluence. Now, you can create Teams-native calendars and add them as a macro to any page or space with just a few clicks. A centrally managed calendar in Microsoft Teams makes collaborating across teams very easy because you don’t have to add people to meetings and appointments separately.