Microsoft rolling out the new Outlook web experience with Suggested replies, improved search and more

Microsoft today announced that it will start the rollout of new Outlook web experience for Office 365 customers who are on the Targeted Release next week. Customers in the Targeted Release can try out this new experience by clicking on the “Try the new Outlook” toggle on the top right corner of their inbox. The new Outlook web experience comes with several new features and improvements including Suggested Replies, improved Calendar experience, improved search and more. Read about them in detail below.

• Search – No time to search? Outlook anticipates what you’ll need based on recent conversations and people with whom you work the most.
• Files – Trying to find a file in your inbox can be a time-consuming exercise, to help you with that we have added a Files module that will show you all the files that you received or sent in your inbox.
• Suggested replies – The new Outlook brings intelligent technology to your inbox to save you time. Focus on what matters more and let Outlook help with you the rest. Use suggested replies when you need to respond with a short message, just a couple of clicks and off you go.
• Simplified event creation — You can now quickly add events to your calendar with updated event icons, so you can quickly identify events and see location suggestions to get address details.
• Smart room suggestions – Intelligent technology in Outlook now helps you find the best room for your meetings based on the attendees, time, availability, and your preferences.
• Simplified add-in experience — We’ve simplified the way you access add-ins while giving you more control. Outlook add-ins bring your favorite apps right to your inbox, so you can accomplish tasks faster
• More ways to use and manage groups in Outlook – We have improved existing features such as faster and simpler group creation, richer group card, more efficient group email triage, and we are also introducing new features such as group Files view that focuses on the latest file activity and group management in the People module.
• Favorites makes things front and center – Many things at work are important and then there are the ones you can’t miss like an email from your manager or a project’s requests and updates. Favorites is perfect for those times, just add specific folders, people, or categories to your Favorites to keep them only a click away.
• More ways to keep up with your groups – Groups cards can now be used from anywhere inside Outlook to view membership information, and group owners can take membership actions as well, or navigate to group apps or group resources such as Files, Planner, and SharePoint site.

Some features in the classic Outlook web experience will not be available in this new version. You can read the list of missing features here. Microsoft will roll out this new Outlook web experience to more Office 365 users in the coming months.

Source: Microsoft