Everything at your fingertips: Microsoft Outlook 2007

Microsoft Outlook 2007 does email, but it’s really a sophisticated tool for organising information of all kinds. Busy NHS workers should find it a godsend; particularly because a host of new features are designed to boost productivity.


Today’s workplace is one of ever changing priorities and relentless demands on your time. If you feel like the plate-spinning contestants on The Generation Game, Microsoft Outlook 2007 will help to get you organised and stop things crashing to the floor.

“To communicate effectively, NHS professionals need reliable, secure and flexible tools, which is precisely what Outlook 2007 is designed to provide,” says Nick Umney, a technical strategist in Microsoft’s UK healthcare team.

All your communications in one place

Outlook 2007 manages everything from email and voicemails to calendar information and your favourite web feeds. “It pulls all of these useful tools together in one place,” says Mr Umney.

“Outlook 2007 is where you can go to access your email and calendar; but that’s only the start. You can also manage tasks, send instant messages, receive voicemail and download RSS feeds, all without leaving Outlook.” “The ability to connect SharePoint documents, calendars, contacts, tasks, and other information to Outlook 2007 means you now have a central place to manage your information; and whatever you do, the central version is always updated automatically.” 
In other words, it’s a single inbox, which means that even if you’re not a technical whizz, you can soon get the most out of all the information at your disposal.

Get started with Outlook 2007

Work remotely or on the road

What’s more, Outlook 2007 lets you access the same information offline. A doctor doing her rounds, for example, can have all her emails and voicemails to hand, even when she is out of the office.

Neil Robinson, managing director of IT consultants White Raven Associates, has four NHS trusts and several social care organisations among his customers. He singles out the Outlook Mobile Service for praise.

“It’s like a web-based text messenger service - you can send and receive text and picture messages between Outlook 2007 and any mobile phone,” he says. “If you’re a district nurse or a community-based health worker heavily dependent on your mobile phone, being able to send and receive text messages to and from your desk-based colleagues is a godsend.”

The Mobile Service can also be used to keep you organised. “You can set the Mobile Service to automatically send emails and calendar reminders as text messages to your own mobile,” Mr Robinson says.

And if your organisation uses Microsoft SharePoint to share documents and calendars, you’ll find Outlook 2007 is seamlessly integrated.

“The ability to connect SharePoint documents, calendars, contacts, tasks, and other information to Outlook 2007 means you now have a central place to manage your information; and whatever you do, the central version is always updated automatically,” says Mr Robinson.

Find out more about Outlook 2007 Mobile Service

Handy new features

There are plenty of other features that are tailor-made for busy healthcare workers. The Document Preview facility means you can view a PowerPoint, Excel or Word document attachment within Outlook. “Simply click on a preview pane to view the attachment without having to open it,” says Mr Robinson. “It means you can quickly read through your messages without opening lots of other programs.” “Having the Task icon at the foot of the calendar means users can now simply ‘drag and drop’ a task onto the calendar and allocate some time in the day to do it.”

You can check all your priorities for the day with the handy To-Do Bar, where you’ll find any flagged emails and tasks clearly laid out. It collates all your current appointments and duties in one handy place. It also connects to tasks you may have stored in other Microsoft Office programs like Project, OneNote, and SharePoint.

Searching is improved, with “plain-English” searching through tasks and notes as well as emails. Instant Search gets results faster than ever.

And with Colour Categories you can personalise and categorise any type of information visually. You might use red for urgent tasks, or blue for all the emails from the oncology department. “It’s a simple, visual way to distinguish items from one another, making it easy to organise your data and search for information,” says Mr Robinson.

If you’ve ever had to find a time slot for a meeting with doctors or consultants, you’ll know it can be a full-time job in itself. Now Outlook offers Calendar Overlays. Simply pop the calendars of your invited attendees over one another and look for a blank space - hey presto: the meeting is set in seconds. Oh, and Outlook will send out the meeting invites automatically, too.

The Tasks function has been around for a while, but is also improved in Outlook 2007. “We conducted some research and found people are more likely to use Tasks if tasks were associated with a date,” says Mr Umney. “Having the Task icon at the foot of the calendar means users can now simply ‘drag and drop’ a task onto the calendar and allocate some time in the day to do it.” 

Find out more about:

• Document Preview
• The To-Do Bar
• Colour Categories
• Calendar Overlays

Buy yourself back some time

Outlook 2007 intuitively integrates all your information sources. Sometimes that means communications (email, voicemail, text messages and Instant Messenger), but it can also mean data from all over the web.

You’ll find for example, that medical dictionaries and research services can easily be tagged on. “In the increasingly multimedia healthcare environment, it will undoubtedly improve your productivity,” says Mr Umney.