Office 365, Mobile Drive E-Mail Roadmap

Exchange Online customers are getting improvements for filtering and collaborating on documents, and Microsoft has re-released acquired mobile e-mail applications for iOS and Android. Exchange Online is a Microsoft-hosted e-mail and collaboration service based on Exchange Server and is commonly sold in Office 365 plans. Future versions of Exchange Online and Microsoft e-mail clients will improve inbox filtering, mobile access, and other e-mail tasks. However, many new capabilities will not be available to customers and partners who host their own Exchange Server systems, and the roadmap for mobile clients is unclear.

This report originally appeared on page 17 of the Feb. 2015 Update. This version includes a revised roadmap for mobile e-mail clients (“Mobile E-Mail Acquisitions”) and other updates.

Automated Filtering a High Priority

Exchange Online customers will receive updates over the next six months that include features to help filter incoming traffic.

Clutter

Clutter is an Office 365 feature that automatically recognizes messages which a user will probably consider low-priority and moves them out of the inbox to a special folder (also called Clutter) where the user can review them. Low-priority messages would typically be messages that the user wants but that don’t require immediate attention, such as messages sent to distribution lists, social network updates, and e-mail newsletters. Clutter dynamically learns to recognize such messages for each user based on the user’s past actions, such as dragging messages manually to the Clutter folder or leaving messages unread. Clutter also employs information about each user from the Office Graph, a new Microsoft-hosted component that infers user relationships and interests from e-mail, directory listings, and other sources.