Apr 27, 2011 14:39 GMT  ·  By

Calendar Analytics, a new application offered free of charge by Microsoft comes with the promise of helping users better manage time and saving them anywhere from a few hours to a whole day per week.

While the tool is not for everybody, it does illustrate the software giant’s efforts to democratize Business Intelligence.

Provided by the Microsoft Business Intelligence team, Calendar Analytics is designed to extract data from Microsoft Exchange Calendar, interpret it via PowerPivot and provide insight into how users spend their time inside Office Excel 2010.

While some customers might be reticent when hearing that Calendar Analytics is a BI tool, fact is that this app is doing all the heavy lifting itself, only producing an easy-to-read dashboard which is simple to analyze.

“Microsoft’s vision is to make business intelligence available to everybody. So we picked one of the biggest problems that is common to the largest number of people: time management,” said Bruno Aziza, director of Microsoft’s Business Intelligence.

“We think making it in an app like Excel that’s very friendly, and using your calendar which you look at on a daily basis, shows people that business intelligence is something that can be used by anybody.”

Customers will be required to use Excel 2010 and of PowerPivot for Excel 2010 in order to take advantage of Calendar Analytics. It’s also important to note that the tool leverages the Exchange Web Services (EWS).

Make sure to watch the video embedded below in order to get an idea of what Calendar Analytics is all about.

“For some of us, managing our time better can mean hours or a full day back out of the week,” Aziza added.

“That’s the kind of return that we’re thinking of for this app. You’re working really hard and trying to be productive, and yet you don’t have a simple button to show you how productive you were, how you spent your time, and what you can do to change things. This is not about working more, it’s about working smarter.”

The Calendar Analytics Tool is available for download here.