Microsoft’s MyAnalytics becomes smarter, more thoughtful

Microsoft’s MyAnalytics is a series of tools the firm provides to companies to help users work smarter, not harder. A report is generated each week allowing them to see work patterns gleaned from emails, meetings and chats. At Microsoft Ignite, the firm announced a series of updates to MyAnalytics which would make them more helpful for workers.

Here’s what they are:

  • Improved data on best practices –Microsoft is making MyAnalytics smarter and surfacing information on things like “Late Night emails”, “After hours communications and missed actionable emails for managers. Essentially, the firm has found that limiting after work contact and encouraging one to one collaboration are valuable in the workplace. Microsoft’s MyAnalytics will now surface these interactions in its weekly report, allowing users to see where they need to improve.
  • Focus Plan rolls out officially to all users – Microsoft announced a new Focus Plan for MyAnalytics last Spring, bringing it to E5 enterprise customers last month. Now the firm says it is becoming generally available for Office 365 commercial customers, so you’ll be able to see it soon if this applies to you. “Productivity preferences are different for everyone, but experts on deep work report that setting aside regular blocks of time to focus on challenging work can have massive benefits,” Microsoft explained earlier this year. “With the focus plan, MyAnalytics will help you establish a daily focus time routine. The focus plan will offer you the flexibility to have daily focus time booked automatically based on your availability, or surface suggestions to book focus time manually as you work in Outlook.”
  • Delayed Email Sending – Microsoft now has a new AI-powered email scheduling suggestion that users can opt into. This dynamically suggests a time for email delivery to be delayed based on the working habits of the recipient, preventing out-of-hours or weekend email. Of course, if it is urgent, you may want to send that email anyway. This way users can draft a missive at their leisure and not have to worry about it hitting at an inconvenient time.

In essence, Microsoft wants workers to work less and do more with the time they have. No more temptations to send that out of office email or check that Yammer message, just optimize your time to get a lot done with a little. The updates to My Analytics will be rolling out soon.

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