🔰 Microsoft Viva Insights Infographic: How to book preparation time before a meeting

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How can I use Viva Insights to set aside time before a meeting to prepare by reading relevant documents, completing requested tasks or any other action that requires preparation ?

With the normalisation of hybrid working, both on-site and remote meetings have become part of every worker's daily routine. The problem is that they can pile up on the calendar, leaving little time for the employee to mentally prepare or take note of the tasks or documents that will be seen during the meeting.

So yes, you can decide to block out time in your calendar yourself, but if you have to do this manually for all the meetings in the week, it can be very time consuming. So how can you keep track of upcoming meetings and automate the process of booking time in advance to prepare for them?

Inline Suggestions in Outlook are short data and AI-driven notifications that appear in Outlook while you are either reading or writing an email or meeting invitation.

These inline suggestions are actually mini virtual assistants that help you keep track of your daily tasks. As of today, there are 8 inline suggestions available and the one that interests us is "Book meeting prep time".

To get this feature, you need 3 conditions :

- Your administrator must have configured the "Insights Outlook add-in and inline suggestions" option on a global level.

- Your organisation must have assigned you a Viva Insights subscription

- You must have added the Viva Insights add-in to Outlook (web or desktop version).

By activating the Viva Insights module in Outlook, you can access a dedicated window that displays a list of upcoming meetings you have arranged or been invited to for the next seven days (including the current day) to help you review and schedule them.

If you are the organiser of the meeting and the meeting requirements below are met, Viva Insights can accept the meeting for you and offer to reserve a preparation slot in your calendar at a time of your choice: 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 1 hour just before, one day before or on the last working day of the week before the meeting.

Once you have selected one of these options, Viva Insights will search your calendar for a free slot and automatically schedule an appointment called "Prep time for [meeting name]".

Once the meeting has been scheduled, you can return to the Viva Insights window in Outlook to view the following information:

- the percentage of people who have accepted the meeting

- the number of people invited

- the number of people who have not responded

- the number of people who have declined the meeting

- the team link for the meeting, the documents, and so on.

If you are a participant in this meeting and the meeting requirements below are met, Viva Insights can accept the meeting for you and offer to reserve a preparation slot in your calendar at a time of your choice: 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 1 hour just before, one day before or on the last working day of the week before the meeting.

Once you have selected one of these options, Viva Insights will search your calendar for a free slot and automatically schedule an appointment called "Prep time for [meeting name]".

1 - This feature is only available with the Viva Insights subscription

2- It is automatically displayed in Outlook Desktop and Web when a user receives and reviews a meeting invitation.

3- The meeting must have fewer than 12 attendees,

4- The meeting must last between 30 and 60 minutes,

5- The meeting must not be a recurring meeting

6- The meeting organiser or attendee must have enough time in their calendar to schedule a prep meeting before the meeting.

7- The meeting cannot be marked as private

8- The meeting cannot have a status of 'Free', 'Working elsewhere' or 'Out of town'.

This Viva Insights module is particularly interesting if you are in an organisation where many (too many) meetings are scheduled. Personally, I always take 10 minutes before a meeting to mentally prepare myself for what's to come, so this module will make my life easier.

However, at the time of writing, Viva Insights only reserves preparation time for the person who has activated the feature. It would have been particularly interesting to be able to invite some of the other people in the meeting to prepare important points to be discussed later in the meeting.

If you liked this tip and think it will be useful to others as well, feel free to share it.