Outlook web version to get Likes and @Mentions

You’ll also receive a notification that your email was liked, providing a bit of additional validation.

Microsoft wants email to learn a few tricks from social media.

The company announced yesterday that it plans to upgrade Outlook, the email service that surged in popularity when Microsoft released an upgraded iPhone client earlier this year, with features taken directly from sites like Facebook and Twitter. The new Exchange Server 2016 enhances and builds on features already available in Exchange 2013, like data loss prevention, automatic recovery from storage failures, and a Web-based Exchange administration center. “I’ve participated in long conversations with a half-dozen people in the past, and whenever we really wanted to address someone, we would stick the “@” symbol before that person’s name.

There’s no doubt that Microsoft is designed for all family members but there a catch.

More important is the “like”.

The “Like” button has an image of a thumbs-up, which everybody with Facebook would be familiar with. While the action is supposed to suggest approval – why else would it be called “liking” or “favoriting” something? – they’re used a little differently in professional settings.

Many companies have moved to supposed email replacements, such as Slack, for communication, but I’m finding that there’s just as much irrelevant clutter in that tool as in email, and it has serious limitations, such as the lack of skimmable subject lines and meeting scheduling. Nonetheless, Outlook’s new feature will allow users to “visibly endorse” specific content of emails and regard it as something worth being attentive to.

There are a few receiver-facing solutions to the first problem.

So, for example, your manager might email you saying, “Great work on the TPS reports”. They will then be notified of this and the objective is to get the person’s attention so they will respond to messages they are mentioned in.

Microsoft is promising coauthoring benefits for attached documents sent in messages, with a side-by-side editing capability available within Outlook. Microsoft reports the first of these updates will arrive by the end of this fiscal quarter.

The latest version of Microsoft’s calendaring and mail server product includes several new features for enterprise customers, including a set of improvements to the web-based Outlook experience, eDiscovery functionality, collaboration and search.