Working Abroad

Keeping Track of Time with Office 365

By Kelly Cronin

Time flies when you're having fun. Time also flies when you're studying abroad, when you're taking seven classes, when you're visiting five cities in seven days, and when you have a thousand tasks to catch up on. Staying on top of everything you need to do can be a challenge no matter where you are.  With so many constant activities (and distractions), keeping track of time while you work abroad can seem almost impossible.  Working with productivity tools from Office 365 can make time management a whole lot easier.

Outlook Calendar

The Outlook calendar can be accessed online, on your desktop, and on your Outlook mobile app. So there is never really an excuse to not keep up with it.  I even checked my calendar to see what day St. Patrick's Day falls on while hiking the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland! One of the most difficult parts of working in a different country is managing the time differences.  The Outlook calendar automatically switches the time to whatever timezone you are in. If you want to contact your co-workers, you can view their calendar and see exactly when they are having meetings, without having to try and add or subtract however many hours ahead or behind you are.  Now you can avoid all those time-difference errors that are both embarrassing and stressful.

Teams

One of my best motivations to staying on track with tasks is knowing how much I'm helping out my team.  Microsoft Teams promotes collaboration through easy-to-use productivity tools.  If I don't want to e-mail my boss at 2am, I can post in our Teams page so she can see it whenever she has time.  That way our messages aren't getting lost in the vortex of unread emails. Teams also separates conversations into different categories, so I can easily see exactly which topic I am discussing. More organization? Yes please!

On Teams, you can also have individual conversations with your co-workers. Use the "Chat" feature to talk one-on-one with team members. You can also save certain conversations so they show up in a list of your saved conversations, favorite different teams, and view both your own recent activity and Team activity. Plus Microsoft Teams is available on your mobile device, making it available anywhere! Collaboration from a different continent is what we like to hear.

Want to see what other Microsoft Solutions can help your workplace boost productivity from anywhere? Click Here