It’s not often one gets to hear from the Outlook team at Microsoft, but often when you do, it’s the announcement of a near new feature for the popular communication platform.
And this time is no different.
Although the Office 365 version of Outlook is already pretty feature packed, the software titan continues to add new options to the service.
The newest additions are a ‘Like’ button, similar to what you see on Facebook, as well as mention triggers using the ‘@’ symbol, which could be used to start conversations or tag others. Nothing overly revolutionary, but two very helpful additions nevertheless.
Using the like button, for instance, users will be able to better endorse emails that are important to them, as it will send a notification to the sender too.
Plus, it would forego the need to send countless acknowledgement emails, as these function perfectly fine as read receipts.
The mentions feature is another welcome addition, and should prove to be quite helpful to users that carry long conversations and bring various recipients into the process.
People can tag their contacts in the body of the email and Outlook will add them to the list of recipients. Additionally, the inbox will show a new @me filter that the user can easily locate and respond to directed emails.
Microsoft has confirmed that the like button is already rolling out to Office 365 First Release users with Exchange Online, while they will get the mentions feature by the middle of October.
Other Office 365 users will have to wait a little, at most until November.
Speaking of which, Outlook.com users will also get access to the mention feature towards the end of the year, while the desktop and mobile clients of the service will receive the update in 2016.
No word on whether the like button will also be launched for the free email service.
