Microsoft will start rolling its Outlook for web redesign to the general public following a long testing phase where you could opt in to try it out, with all the bells and whistles as well as bugs and unpolished features. In light of increasing competition from Google with its Gmail suite, as well as others, the company has been playing catch up in terms of features, as well as a modernized interface that it believes will improve workflow in terms of scheduling and communication.
Microsoft has been testing a many of new features for its email service that are designed to increase productivity such as categories and improved search. Categories will make it easier to tag, find or organize your messages and you can even add multiple categories to a message, add a category as a favorite or find your categories using search.
Outlook on the web will even be getting a dark mode with the option to “turn the lights on” within individual messages in case you need to see something more clearly. A new snooze option will also allow users to postpone messages for later and they’ll reappear in your inbox as unread.
Outlook calendar is also getting an overhaul and now users will be able to see an overview of their upcoming events in the month view.
Business users can now create meetings more easily as they’ll be able to do so right from the calendar with one click. Clicking on the dropdown menu for ‘Add online meeting’ will let users choose between having a meeting on Skype or in Microsoft Teams. You will even be able to see attendees’ responses to a meeting invite right from within Outlook.
Finally, Microsoft has bundled in a new version of Tasks that syncs with To-Do. Also, now when you flag an email, it will be automatically added to your To-Do list.
According to Microsoft, the new Outlook on the web will begin rolling out to users in late July.
