We love Office 2010! As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we have had it for several weeks and have been digging in to see what new features and capabilities are added. Microsoft seems to have taken a new direction with Windows and Office. Instead of adding a ton of new features with about a ton of new bugs and new bloat, they have really tightened down and provided some new functions that are very helpful, and at the same time made the core pieces more reliable and responsive. I suspect that they have been using all of that information we send electronically as part of the Customer Experience Improvement program (link). They can tell what features users like, what things they tend to do and the order they do them in, and what bugs they encountered.

There are several new features in Outlook 2010 that help us. One is Outlook's ability to create an email with your calendar to easily share availability. Our partner, Brian Fontanella, has been using this and it really saves time. He shared this with us.

If someone says “send me some dates for “x” time we can meet”, you can just to outlook calendar, and click “Email Calendar”. A new email will be started, and a dialog will appear giving you a lot of control over what is generated.

Put in who you want share it with, the dates and what you want to share. The person will get something like this, which you can add text to, etc.:

Pretty Sweet!