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Remote work is a topic that has attracted a lot of attention, especially as many office workers were unexpectedly thrust into a work-at-home environment due to COVID-19. Working from home was becoming increasingly commonplace even before the pandemic, however. According to data issued by the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.7 million people were already working remotely in the US before the coronavirus. Additionally, in the last decade, Europe’s remote workforce has grown from 7.7 to 9.8 percent. Although telecommuting technology has been around for the past couple of decades, it hasn’t really started to take off till the last five years or so. Technological advances in cloud computing and videoconferencing have made it possible for employees to work from home seamlessly. 

Microsoft Outlook^® is an excellent email client and calendaring solution that many organizations use, but its meeting and resource booking capabilities leave a lot to be desired. From lack of visibility to missing description, using Microsoft Outlook^® for meeting and resource booking can present many issues. The following are some of the most common problems that users experience when booking meetings and resources through Outlook^®.   The need to use multiple, disparate systems to book resources and order services   When you book a meeting room, you often need to order additional services like catering or audiovisual equipment. If you’re using Microsoft Outlook^® to book meetings, this means you’ll have to log in to different systems to order catering, create invoices to send to service providers, etc.

Avoid Getting Your Recurring Meeting Series Declined Every Time There’s nothing more frustrating than booking a recurring meeting series, only to have the request declined due to just one or a few conflicting instances in the meeting room. Thanks to our meeting room booking software it’s now possible to know if all meeting rooms are available for all recurring meetings.   Even if a meeting room is not available on all the requested dates of a meeting, you can still book the room for the available occurrences. When you try to book a new meeting room, the conflicting dates will all be listed and viewable at a glance. The order form will show the approved dates for booking the meeting room, so you can still book catering to

The Benefits of a Shared Calendar Studies have shown that properly managed telecommuters are more productive than full-time, in-office workers, and a key tool that enables companies to effectively manage remote workers and coordinate team projects is a web-based team calendar. A team calendar software for Microsoft Outlook^® keeps remote workers and employees who are frequently on the road connected to your company. It offers a centralized way to set up meetings and projects. A group calendar can be viewed 24/7 from any web-enabled device. Project managers, consultants, salespeople, and other employees can access their team calendar when they are out of the office visiting clients or attending to other matters. They can use the group calendar to keep track of meetings, conference calls, and project deadlines.

Many people dream of working from home. They can say goodbye to their dreadful commute, wear pajamas all day, sip on homemade coffee, and zip through tasks without the distractions of an office. Better yet, remote working could even mean working from exotic destinations, such as a tropical beach, with just your laptop. Despite its obvious advantages, working at home can bring a number of distractions and downsides.   Concentration Suffers Having difficulty concentrating on work issues is a common complaint for those who work from home. Everything from unexpected visits, to noise from children or pets can make it very distracting to work from home. Other people may also have a hard time accepting the notion that you are busy, even though you