If an organization already has Cortana enabled, they also would need to purchase and enable Scheduler, the other Cortana experiences do not have to be enabled for someone in the organization to use Scheduler.ĭelegate scheduling across multiple scenarios Scheduler is enabled independently from other Cortana services, such as Cortana for Windows 10 and the Briefing email from Cortana. Microsoft 365 administrators can create a custom mailbox for Scheduler and through a new PowerShell commandlet configure it to process meeting requests in natural language from users in their organization, including looking up attendee availability, negotiating times over email, sending calendar invites, and even rescheduling or canceling a meeting if needed. Cortana also provides the frontend assistant that users interact with through email conversations to schedule a meeting. Cortana, the productivity assistant in Microsoft 365, acts through a custom mailbox* that is configured by the administrator. Scheduler is a backend service that provides the scheduling intelligence, workflow, and can be enabled by the Microsoft 365 administrator.

As simple as “Cortana, please find a time to meet next week,” to something more detailed like “Cortana, please find us 45 minutes in the last week of the month in the morning for Pacific time and make it a Teams meeting.” As Scheduler learns, you may receive responses from Cortana asking you to clarify certain asks or to provide more details in order to complete your request.Īsk Cortana in your own words to schedule a meetingĪlthough Scheduler and Cortana complement each other, they are separate – and different – parts of the user’s experience. Scheduler understands what you write, so you can word your requests to Cortana just as you would when asking any person for assistance scheduling a meeting in an email.

Let’s dig into what makes Scheduler work.

With the average time to schedule a meeting taking 6 to 29 minutes, Scheduler aims to give you back time to focus on the important things by making it easier, faster, and being available 24/7 to schedule meetings for you, and it’s available starting today. It’s not just you: weekly meetings have increased by 148% and the time that employees spend trying to schedule meetings both inside and outside of their organization is climbing.

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