Galaxy Watch with Office 365

This summer I finally managed to switch away from Fitbit world. After doing some research I ended up on Samsung Galaxy Watch despite my earlier opinions about it (not Wear OS). Apple Watch would have been my choice if I were using a Apple phone, but since I am in Android world I ended up with Galaxy Watch.

What made me choose Galaxy Watch?

all the important apps notifications are available for it with some reply option
ability to answer call via the watch (this is actually about noticing incoming calls since Fitbit was too slow to notify about them)
ability to control Spotify
great display
tracking my sleep, steps, heart rate, etc Fitbit stuff I have gotten used to.
calendar
reminders
silent wake-up (like with Fitbit – again)
two days with one charge (actually they promise 3-4 with this largest version, but for me it is something like 2.5 days)

But this article is about Office 365 and Galaxy Watch interoperability. One requirement was that I can connect & interact with Office 365 directly via my wrist. This is done via notifications.

I can go go ahead and choose which apps notifications I want to see on my wrist. The list may be too long currently, especially since it contains apps I don’t really use.

The important piece here is Outlook. I can get Outlook notifications into my wrist and check out the email directly if I want to. Especially with Teams, since I get less email than say a year and half ago , this is allows me to close my Outlook on my desktop for longer periods of time ( I can ignore irrelevant / non-urgent emails easily and yet choose to quickly glance through customer emails for example).

Teams & other notifications

I can choose to receive these Office 365 apps notifications

Outlook
Teams
To-Do
Excel
Flow
Groups
Kaizala
Launcher (yeah, not Office 365 app but Microsoft app)
Microsoft 365 Admin
Stream
Office Lens
OneDrive
OneNote
Planner
Power BI
PowerApps
PowerPoint
SharePoint
(Skype for Business if you still use it)
Word
Yammer
Intune

Pretty awesome list! I especially like Teams and Kaizala notifications here, since I can also react to Teams messages without using my phone. I can also reply with a short predefined messages, emoji or using Bixby speech-to-text. Bixby however doesn’t cope well with Finglish so it is not usable for me.

I am of course very excited to see what SharePoint and OneDrive will allow me to do. Since I had these disabled during vacation I am yet to see do they allow me to actually do anything without using a phone. Some apps notification is basically just: there is a notification, open this in your phone.

I can see Planner can be very useful as well: to remind about new & late tasks.

The big potential will be with Flow. I will later test if I can react/interact with Flow via notifications.

So far I am extremely happy about my new watch. This has allowed me to keep my phone away more than before and yet I can stay up to date on family & friends (Whatsapp usually) and of course at work (Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, Yammer). And yes, the spinning bezel is a great UI feature.

Linking Office 365 calendar events into Galaxy Watch calendar widget-app

Sadly, the Galaxy Watch calendar app does not integrate with Office 365 directly. There is a few steps needed to get your Office 365 calendar visible.

you need to publish your Office 365 calendar via url

Then open your Google account calendar you use with your phone that is linked into Galaxy Watch
Go to full calendar view
Add new other calendar via link, rename the calendar if needed
Go to phone google calendar and make sure you put a checkbox to linked calendar
Sync if needed (make sure your phone is set to sync Google calendar events)
After this your new appointments in your Office 365 calendar will be synchronized into your Google account and thus into your Phone’s calendar and Galaxy Watch calendar.

Even without this syncing of calendars you will get Outlook notifications on watch, but you won’t have the calendar to view upcoming appointments.

Note: some organizations may have disabled the publishing of calendar due to security concerns.