Outlook Calendar has a great feature that enables you to create your own customized dashboards that are able to show the information you need for work or personal use. Organize your events.
Microsoft says this feature will stop working in June 2023.
Dashboards, or just boards as Microsoft Outlook Calendar calls them, are a great way to view and organize a wide range of information from calendar events and appointments, to tasks to do, to locations and travel directions, notes, files, people, goals and more.
If you have not yet discovered boards yet, you are in for a treat. Here I look at some of the great features and show some of the objects you can place on them. There is more to be discovered once you start experimenting with them.
Multiple boards can be created and you can easily switch between them. You could create separate boards for different work projects or one for work and one for personal items. It is up to you how many you create and what you use them for.
For this guide I use the calendar in a free Outlook account. Everything will work in a paid Microsoft 365 account too, but a free account is all you need. It makes no difference whether you do this on a Windows PC, Apple Mac or Linux computer. Everything is carried out in a web browser.
1 View Outlook calendar
Go to outlook.com in a web browser. Sign in if necessary. Then click the calendar icon on the left to show your calendar. This is the normal calendar view.
2 Switch calendar views
Click Month or whatever view is the current one in the toolbar at the top. In addition to Day, Work week, Week and Month views is Board. Move the mouse over the > at the right-hand side to see a list of boards. This is how you would switch between multiple boards and create new ones. For now, just click Board to open the default board.
3 Welcome to your dashboard
The dashboard, or just board as Outlook calls it, may be empty or it may have example items on it. Here is an empty board. It is a blank canvas on which you can place objects, modules or items, whatever you want to call them. Click Add to board at the top.
4 Add items to a board
There are 12 items on the menu to choose from – click Show more or Show less to expand or shrink the menu. A calendar, task list, note, weather forecast, file, location, goal and more can be added. It is up to you which items you choose.
5 Add a calendar to the board
Since this is Outlook Calendar, it makes sense to add a calendar to the dashboard. Select it on the menu and then choose which calendar to show if you have more than one set up.
6 Configure the board item
Every item that is added to a board has a three-dots button in the top right corner. Click it to access a menu. There are often settings here and with the calendar you can select the type of view you want.
7 Add more items, like tasks
Click Add to board and add another item, such as a task list. The tasks are ones in Microsoft To-do, which can be accessed on the web in a browser, in the PC or Mac To-do app or in the iPhone or Android phone app.
8 Configure To-do tasks in Calendar boards
After adding the Task list item to the board, click Tasks at the top and choose which category of tasks to show, such as My Day, Flagged Emails, or any category you have created in Microsoft To-do.
9 Build your dashboard
Here I have added a calendar, task list, weather forecast, note and click. Each item can be clicked and dragged to move it and they are not fixed in this order, put them in whatever order suits you best. Space them out, squash them together, change the colors, it is up to you.
This is not the full set of items that can be placed on a board and there are many more items. For example, you can add files, add a location with a map and get driving directions, and more. This is a great feature of Outlook calendar. Boards cannot be viewed on a phone, but that is probably because there is too much information to fit on the screen. It is great for desktop computers, PC or Mac.
Now that you have one board, why not create another board with different items. Create one for each work project, or one for work and another for personal use.
