External customer scheduling features

Microsoft organizer uses a tool to send a set of propsed times their team can meet with customer. Customer selects the suggestion they like the most or proposes new time for oganizer. Once a time is agreed, invite is automatically sent out. The entire process is handled outside of email.

Microsoft organizer can see a combined calendar view with all Microsoft and external customer free/busy data. Organizer can use that data as they wish to propose a new meeting.

Microsoft organizer can ask individual, high-trust customers outside Microsoft to share a current, one-time, snapshot of their calendar with organizer directly. Customer can decide what parts of the calendar to share in the snapshot (free/busy, meeting titles, etc). Customer can give another snapshot at anytime.

Outlook plugin allows Microsoft organizer to create an invite but specify multiple times as possibilities when they can meet with customer. Customer gets multiple Outlook invites, one for each proposed time, and accepts only the one they like, rejecting the rest.

The Microsoft organizer proposes a new meeting with Microsoft and external customer attendees both. The system waits until all internal attendees are available on Lync and starts a group call to discuss and close on a meeting time to meet the customer. The organizer creates an invite with the agreed upon time.

Microsoft organizer proposes a new meeting to external customer and both sides give time ranges out they are free to meet. The system selects the first one that intersects and automatically sends out an invite.

External non-Microsoft organizations can share their availability data with Microsoft. Microsoft organizer sees availability suggestions across the organizations rather than just within Microsoft.

Microsoft organizer can view probabilistic availibility for Microsoft team members. Probabilistic availibility takes into consideration the historical behavior of how the attendee accepts/declines meetings at various times and with various people, the actual attendee working office hours, and other profile data about the attendee. It is essentially a best-guess intelligent availibility calculation.

Microsoft organizer can send an invite with time suggestions to multiple customer attendees and customers can vote on and propose new time slots. Organizer can then select best match for customers.

Microsoft organizer can create an invite and allow Microsoft (internal) attendees to vote on and propose new time suggestions before to come to an internal consenus on a set of free time slots. One or more of the agreed upon slots are then sent to non-Microsoft customer to select.