Issue/Question
How do I turn focus time on or off in Office 365?
Environment
Additional Details
The focus plan in Viva Insights helps you set aside regular focus time for your top-priority work. When you enroll in this plan Viva Insights automatically schedules up to two hours of focus time for you every day. During the booked focus time, it silences chats in Teams.
Automatic Booking:
After you set automatic booking as your preference, Viva Insights starts looking for time on your Outlook calendar to set aside as focus time. The time that it books on your calendar appears in a different color and is labeled "Focus time".
Focus time never creates a calendar conflict; that is, focus time will not be booked over any existing calendar event, such as all-day meetings, booked personal time, or appointments.
Viva Insights books focus time two weeks in advance. For example: when you open your calendar on a Monday, you should see focus time booked every day of the current week and all the way through the Friday of the following week. Each weekend it looks for time blocks in the next week out and books time accordingly.
Although two hours is the maximum length of a focus-time block that can be scheduled automatically, you can extend your focus time, by hand, in your Outlook calendar.
How Time Slots are Selected:
The time it reserves for you depends on the time you have open during the day. Viva Insights starts its search at the beginning of your workday, as it is defined in your Outlook settings.
Viva Insights also respects the Do not schedule focus time earlier than setting in the Plan configuration dialog box.
Viva Insights also prioritizes your preferences for length of focus time slots and part of day (morning or afternoon). For example, if you choose four hours of focus time and choose afternoon, Viva Insights first scans your calendar to find four-hour open slots in the afternoon. If it finds no four-hour open slots in the afternoon, it continues to scan your calendar to find four-hour open slots in the morning. If only smaller amounts of time are available, it can book focus blocks as short as 30 minutes.
After it books a block on one day, it then moves on to the next day to find the next suitable block, based on your preferences. (In most cases, it creates only one block of focus time per day.)
Lunch Time:
Viva Insights considers the time from 12:00 PM (noon) to 1:00 PM as time for the midday meal. If you have automatic booking turned on, Viva Insights tries to book any other time of day first. If it finds no other blocks of time available, it will then book focus time during the lunchtime period.
Resolution
Microsoft Documentation:
Turn Focus Time On:
- Navigate to the Viva Insights for Office 365.
- Select Home or Wellbeing Tabs on the left side.
- Select Start a daily focus plan.
- Once you click Start a daily focus plan, it will change to Focus time planned. Select Change settings if you want to change the options for your focus plan. Otherwise you will be enrolled to 2 hours of focus time a day.
- In the settings, select Get started. This area will let you select dates and times for focus time.
- Select the settings from the configure your quiet time that work best for you but also other settings below this box as well.
- Save changes once complete.
Note: If you mute notifications, during focus time, your status in Teams will automatically change to "Focusing" to silence chat notifications. When the focus time appointment ends, your status will automatically revert to the status you were previously in. You can set priority contacts in Teams to ensure you don't miss out on important messages during focus time.
Turn off Focus Plan or Change the Configuration:
- Navigate to the Viva Insights for Office 365.
- In the settings screen, scroll down to click Leave Plan.
Note: Your focus plan will automatically schedule appointments for two weeks out. If you choose to leave the plan the focus time already scheduled will remain on your calendar unless manually deleted.
