Getting Started

Understand your meeting time-spend

Outlook already contains all of the information you need to know about your meetings. Our meetings add-in for Outlook analyses that data and provides you a real-time analysis of how you (and your team) spend your meeting time.

It works in the background of Outlook, gathering meeting data from your calendar on a daily basis and presenting an easy to understand picture back to you. All versions of Outlook from Outlook 2007 onwards enable the full functionality of the add-in.

To install the add-in, please follow the following steps carefully:

1. Close everything down except this webpage (restart your machine if you have time)
2. Click this link, select to ‘run’ the download (this may appear at the bottom of this page, or in your ‘downloads’folder), and follow the instructions
3. Open Outlook, and let things settle down before you do anything else – and wait for an Inspirometer email (It sometimes helps to close and reopen Outlook a second time – even if you have the email)
4. Decide on whether you wish to upload past meeting data, and accept Inspirometer’s terms and conditions of use
5. If you can see the Inspirometer buttons on your Outlook ribbon, and they work, that is it done
6. If the buttons aren’t there, or they don’t work, you may need to do some basic troubleshooting

Ensuring you can access your data securely

Your account holds all of your meeting effectiveness data very securely. Your account will have been set up by your administrator. (Please note, if you are the administrator, you will need to create accounts for yourself and your colleagues through the set-up process).

To access your account, you may need to create a new password (if you have not already done so) which you can do by following this link:   https://my.inspirometer.com/preview/recover_password
– simply type in your email address and you will be sent an email with a button to reset your password.

Clicking the ‘Reset Password’ button will take you to a page where you can enter your new password, and then proceed to another page where you can log into your account using your email address and the password you have created.

If you have not received an email after 5 minutes, the most likely cause is one of the following:

1. The email may have got caught up in your spam filters. To prevent this, please add inspirometer.com to your recognised email list.
2. You may have misspelled your email address – it does happen.
3. Your account may not have been set up by your administrator. Please let them know that you have not received an email and ask them to check that you have been set up on the system correctly.

Once you have accessed your account, you will be able to see your meeting data in real time. For guidance on this, please see the meeting help pages.

Get ready to provide meeting feedback

Feedback is key to improving any process. The Inspirometer App makes feedback on meetings easy, quick, anonymous and fun. The benefit is fewer, shorter, better meetings; greater enthusiasm and faster progress.

The App provides easy access to give and receive feedback for all participants in a meeting.

Once you have installed your App, it will ask you to register your email address and Inspirometer will automatically synchronise your App to any meetings which have been set-up for feedback. Once installed, feedback is as simple as opening the app and clicking on the faces.

Once you are set up on inspirometer, setting up feedback is as easy as including the meetings@inspirometer.com email address in your list of meeting invitees. If you have already installed the calendar add-in, the inclusion of meetings@inspirometer.com in a new meeting invitation will happen automatically, but you can always delete it if you do not require feedback for that meeting.

When the meeting invitation goes out, the copy sent to meetings@inspirometer.com will be used to automatically set up feedback using the information contained in the invite. The attendees email addresses will be used to configure their Inspirometer Apps for the time of the meeting, or (if they do not have the app, or do not use it) to send them a simple poll at the end of the meeting.

This short video shows you how to use your Outlook add-in to set up new and existing meetings for feedback.

As you progress in your use of Inspirometer, you can find more sophisticated options for setting up meeting feedback in section 2 of the help pages.

Providing feedback is best done through the Inspirometer App.  If your meeting invitation shows that it has been set up for feedback, your App will automatically configure itself to display a panel similar to the one on the right at the top of your dashboard from five minutes before the start of the meeting. Clicking on the green Feedback button will change the screen to present one or more sets of faces, which enable you to provide feedback on that meeting – or more specifically, how you feel about how well the meeting utilised your time to add value.

This distinction is important. You are NOT judging the meeting or its organiser. You are simply judging how you feel you have moved forward as a result – for whatever reasons. This point is expanded in the video below. If you feel you have not received or added value to the extent you had expected, it is important that you provide some sort of explanation so that the organiser can think through whether they have any options to facilitate improvement in that area.

In the event that you do not provide feedback during the meeting, you will still be able to do so for a period of up to 3 days after the meeting by using its entry in the feedback on past meetings panel (also on the dashboard). This will appear like the image on the right, and may list several meetings for which feedback has not yet been utilised. The panel is designed to enable you to clear down any overlooked items quickly at the end of the day.

This short video shows more detail on the process, and addresses some of the common misconceptions and concerns about feedback.

Read the guidance on giving/receiving meeting feedback

Meeting feedback can be viewed and shared via the App, in real-time, within the meeting. This can be useful for longer meetings where the organiser may wish to adjust the flow of the meeting based on feedback, and may wish to engage the participants in sharing responsibility for those adjustments.

Initially, only the organiser can see the feedback on the meeting itself (other participants are simply informed that the organiser has not shared the results). Within the actual pages for feedback on a specific meeting, results can be viewed via the ‘Results’ tab. The organiser’s view includes a button to share the results, and clicking this button provides options to share the results with all attendees or just specific individuals.

This short video illustrates the process and shows how to revisit the results afterwards.

The advice contained in various sections of this page provide a flying start to using the Inspirometer, and may prove more than sufficient for many users. However, the options and resources available through Inspirometer have been designed to add value in a whole range of ways and in a whole range of  circumstances. These have been omitted from this introduction in order to preserve the inherent simplicity of the tool.

As you progress in your use of Inspirometer, you may wish to:

• Gather feedback at points within a meeting
• Enable feedback to meeting attendees based on their participation
• See trends and analyses of meeting performance for different types of meetings
• Identify strategies to improve different aspects of your meetings
• See patterns across different teams within your organisation
• Establish a culture of engagement and inspiration through meetings

All of these things are possible.

Once you have mastered the basics, sections 2 to 6 of the help pages will provide you with guidance on how to do each of these things and more.

Meeting feedback can be obtained in a number of ways both for the host of the meeting, and for those participating in the meeting. Providing you are set up with an Inspirometer account, meeting feedback is enabled simply by including meetings@inspirometer.com in the invitation list for the meeting.

Once this is done, the other participants invited to your meeting will receive the opportunity to provide single click feedback on the meeting. If they have installed the app, and registered their email address, this will be through the App, but if they have not it will be done by email.

Please try it out by picking on one or two ‘friends’ and sending them a test meeting, lasting 10 minutes, and scheduled for a few minutes hence. Remember to include meetings@inspirometer.com (if you have the add-in this may happen automatically).

To access your account and see the data, follow this link: https://my.inspirometer.com/preview/dashboard and use your email address and your password* to log into your account.