Microsoft Replacing Clutter in Upcoming Office 365 Update

Internally and almost everybody here has been turning off the clutter function in Microsoft Outlook. It is been a feature that none of us have really liked very much because of its inconsistencies in the way that it operates. It is planning on replacing it with a feature called “Focused Inbox” which is all ready running in the iOS and android Outlook apps.

Focused Inbox uses a ta andb system separating "information between "focused" and "other" tabs. So now you have a program that is determining what is low or high priority and separating them into these two containers. I have not thought much of the algorithm that that phone apps is using two separate these messages so hopefully it'll start to get better as time goes on.

Clutter did not work particularly well for people who had complex inbox rules already in place to manage their email, or who did not receive enough email for the Clutter algorithms to learn what to do with it. For businesses, the sudden disappearance of email into a separate folder caused some support issues, with administrators having to seek out the administrative controls for Clutter after the CEO's important company-wide email didn't get read by half the employees.

Microsoft promises that when this new feature rolls out in Outlook that the messages and color will automatically be moved over to the other tab. When your outlook is updated Microsoft says that it will give you an opt in option that will appear in Outlook and he will give you the option to start using focused inbox. There will also be an option for you to turn off Focused Inbox at any time as well.

There's going to be another feature that is being added called the Outlook @Mentions Feature. It is a quick tagging function that will allow you to add users to email discussion. All you will need to do is to add the @ symbol in a message and you'll get a list of names with the next letter typed. Recipients of your email that have been tagged in this manner will see their email name in a blue highlight color, so they'll know that they had been added to the thread.

Microsoft states that this feature in Outlook will work with any email service you're using in Outlook. However the blue highlight feature will just be available for Outlook.com and office 365 accounts. This function should be added later in the year for other services like Gmail and Yahoo.