Outlook is one of the most widely used calendaring tools. The functionality of Outlook is tightly integrated with related functionality for electronic mail, address book management, and task management. This high degree of integration is a feature of many modern calendaring systems, and is in some sense the standard for calendaring tools. If cross-tool integration is a desirable feature, than Outlook provides it. Such integration is in fact not a requirement for the Calendar tool described in these requirements.

Overall, Outlook provides an acceptable level of calendar functionality. It does not support multi-platform use, since it is a Microsoft-only product.

Good Features:

• a defacto standard, widely used, and therefore widely supported
• all the basic calendaring functionality is provided
• good integration with related tools
• spelling and proofing tools are useful

Bad Features:

• importing is limited to selected types of calendars and other data
• closed proprietary calendar format precludes export to most other calendar tools
• multi-user support provided by an external software component, instead of built-in
• the abundance of text insert and formatting tools is really overkill for a calendaring program
• annoying (to some) vertical tabs
• not primarily a calendaring tool, so lacks some advanced features desired for the tool proposed in these requirements
• the "Show As" and "Privacy" properties are not well integrated, and hence not entirely clear to use
• the layout of the interface, and organization of the tool bars is not ergonomically appealing, in particular the lack of integration of "Appointment", "Scheduling", and "Recurrence" information

Missing Features:

• an open-source data format
• sophisticated meeting scheduling, though some third-party tools exist (e.g., Presdo
• email reminders
• sophisticated filtered viewing
• detailed options for view formatting; the provided "options" are really properties of scheduled items, not really options of the sort that control tool behavior and output
• a distinction clear distinction between the kind of items that can be stored in a calendar, in particular appointments versus meetings versus tasks versus simple events
• multi-window viewing of weeks and months, or some form of multi-week, multi- month display
• no apparent support for multi-user groups, for the purposes of meeting scheduling