Let's face it, when we think of Outlook, we think of email - and very often that's all the average user has it for. It's true that it's a very powerful email tool, however there are other ways to use Outlook outside of email that can make your day to day running of the office and your schedule much easier. Here are three different ways you could be using Outlook for other tasks at work.

Meetings

Unavoidable and sometimes hard to organise, meetings can be made simpler with Outlook. Whereas before, you may have only used Outlook to send an email with the request for a meeting or perhaps to distribute the minutes, you can also use the calendar feature to schedule a meeting when you know someone's free, rather than trying to catch them on the off-chance that they are available. This counts for more than one person, so you can already draft the apologies section of the minutes if you can see that someone is on holiday for the time you're going to hold your meeting.

You can also create meetings that run in a cycle, so you don't need to remember the twice annual meeting with the shareholders - Outlook will do it for you. These will also appear in the other person's calendar too once you've invited them, so there's no need to constantly remind people to turn up.

Contacts

Everyone knows what an email address book is and normally knows how to use it in its most basic form. However, Outlook provides many other tools to sort these contacts out. You can arrange them into groups, whether this is as simple as dividing up your contacts for home and work, or you can create as many as you like. You can also send contacts to another recipient, similar to giving them a business card in person or on a mobile.

You can also format your contacts, for example, highlighting a number in red if it's only to be used for emergency calls only, or adding someone's photo so you can "put the face to the name" after a hectic bout of networking.

Voting

Want to know how many people are free to come to the Christmas party this year? Do a vote - Outlook has the facility and will count up the results for you. This, of course, is best used for minor events rather than full scale votes such as those that take place when seconding and putting forward minutes at a meeting, but it can still be extremely useful in the day to day running of the office.

Putting out a vote also makes your staff and colleagues feel more included and that they have a say in the running of the workplace, something that will only ever increase morale and encourage feedback.

So you see, there's more to Outlook than email - all three of the above tools can be successfully used in conjunction with it. There are also more advanced elements of Outlook, but these are usually picked up on an advanced training course. If you like what you've seen so far, why not give it a go?