Windows 10: New Play My Emails feature in Outlook for iOS

Brink · May 27, 2020

The transformation of business environments and blurring lines between work and personal lives may require more flexibility in how we get things done and increase the need for help to balance professional and life's commitments. Today weâre announcing new capabilities in Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS that will help you organize your time and tasks and feel connected as you go about your day. Play My Emails offers you the ability to listen and respond to whatâs new in your inbox when you need to step out to get groceries or walk the dog, when your hands are busy taking care of household chores, or if you need to take a break from extended computer time. This new set of capabilities can help keep you organized, on time and more in control of your schedule so you get time back to focus on the things that matters most to you.

Get help with scheduling and time management

The Play My Emails experience starts with a summary of new, unread emails and event updates. Now when you listen to a readout of the meeting invitations in your inbox, you have the opportunity to quickly RSVP when Cortana asks if youâd like to accept the invitation or you can simply tap the new Accept or Decline touch targets. Donât worry, Cortana lets you know if the invitation is for today, tomorrow, or a specific day so you donât need to figure out which day of the week it is and since you wonât have line of sight to your calendar at that moment, Cortana also calls out if you have a conflict at that time. Once youâve made your decision, Cortana responds on your behalf and updates the event host and your calendar according to your preference.

Accept or Decline an invitation

If you receive an email about an important issue, you may want to discuss before responding. Now you can ask Cortana to set up a meeting with the sender. Cortana finds the next available 30 minute time slot while being mindful of peopleâs location and time zones and asks you if youâd like to schedule it. To provide more insight about how the event fits in your day, Cortana informs you if you have meetings before or after the suggested time slot your Outlook Calendar. But if you prefer a different time, just suggest it and Cortana gives you the option to schedule it your way instead.

Convert an email into a meeting

One recommended best practice for working remotely is to schedule time for yourself too. Now you can simply ask to block time on your Calendar to focus on what matters; you and your well-being. While using Play My Emails you can say âHey Cortana, block time on my calendarâ â¦ and Cortana will find time for you. Another way to focus on what you need to get through your day is to use Play My Emails to give you the flexibility of stepping away from your computer. You can stay connected to whatâs new in your inbox while taking a much needed break. When you find yourself in back-to-back online meetings, simply pop in your favorite headset and take them on the move.

If you choose the new Surface Earbuds, you can use the touch surface to âtap and holdâ and give voice commands such as âFlag this, reply, or skip to the next messageâ or you can simply navigate through your emails by swiping back or forth. Plus, when a Bluetooth connection with Surface Earbuds is detected, Outlook will help pair them with your phone to optimize for immersive sound and use the earbud microphones for exceptional voice recognition.

Surface Earbuds touch controls with Play My Emails

There may be times that you use this blocked time to juggle personal responsibilities during the workday and sometimes that can mean youâll be late for your next meeting. Play My Emails can help you manage your commitments in a professional way by providing you with the option to send a message that youâre running late. To help you be on time however, we are rolling out the option for you to quickly join a Teams Meeting if itâs in progress or within a minute from the start of the meeting. Cortana will ask you if youâd like to join so you can do that hands-free or you can simply tap the Teams touch target to join.

Quickly join a Teams Meeting

Donât miss a thing

Keeping it all together is challenging at the best of times. But these are extraordinary times so getting a little assistance to stay organized may help. Outlook makes it easier to get things done when you hear about a task from your email that you'll need to address. You can flag emails in Play My Emails or your Outlook inbox to add them as tasks in Microsoft 365 which syncs with your To Do app. Now you can also create tasks from specific emails by asking Cortana to add the email to your tasks list. This way you can manage your tasks in To Do when itâs more convenient or view your top 3 tasks from To Do on your proactive Search page in Outlook for iOS and other Outlook experiences.

Convert an email into a new task

Since the November launch, we learned from customers that using Play My Emails to quickly reply to emails with your voice is a great way to triage your inbox but sometimes itâs hard to dictate replies clearly on the first go. Weâve added the ability to edit your reply â now you can ask Cortana to try to dictate your response again rather than save it as a draft email to address later. Additionally, once youâre happy with your response, you can take further action on the email youâve just responded to, such as Archive or Delete, to complete your work.

With many stores still closed, online shopping has increased. If you receive emails about upcoming package deliveries or bill payments, Play My Emails will readout the confirmation or reminder emails to help you stay on top of whatâs due.

You can also catch up on emails about recent activity related to documents you are collaborating on â if your colleagues add comments to your document or assign you a task with @mention, Cortana will let you know. Similarly, Teams activity notifications are also read out so you donât miss whatâs going on within a Teams Channel and Chat.

Lastly, and just a reminder, you can set up a Siri shortcut to start Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS. This way when you see an email notification or calendar reminder on the lock screen of your iPhone, you can simply ask Siri to âRead me my emailsâ so you can catch up with whatâs new in your inbox any time.

Weâve already released several of these task and time management updates in Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS and should complete the rollout of all the capabilities mentioned here to customers in the United States in next couple of weeks. And while we donât yet have a timeline to share when we can extend Play My Emails to customers in other countries, we are pleased to confirm that we will start to add Play My Emails in Outlook for Android in the coming weeks too.

Please let us know what you think about these updates here in Microsoft Tech Community or continue to provide feedback in Settings > Help and Feedback in Outlook for iOS or at Outlook.uservoice.com. And thanks.

Frequently Asked Questions

1) I have a lot of unread email in my inbox, why does the Play My Emails only read some of them?[/LIST]
A: At this time, Cortana reads out only the new emails you received in the last 24 hours and schedule changes. Very soon you will be able to catch up on unread Emails from the last 72 hours.

2) Can I propose a new time to meet rather than Accept or Decline a meeting invitation?
A: You can reply to the calendar invitation with a quick response that youâd prefer a different time to meet.

3) If I set up a Siri shortcut, does that mean Siri can read my emails?
A: No, the Siri shortcut for opens Outlook for iOS and activates Play My Emails. You can learn about Cortana, your personal productivity assistant, in Office 365 here. Cortana in Office 365 meets the same enterprise-level privacy, security, and compliance promises as reflected in the Online Services Terms (OST).

4) If I schedule a meeting in response to an email, will it be set up as an online meeting?
A: Yes, if your organization has selected a preferred online meeting provider such as Teams, then Cortana will make it a Teams Meeting and include the details necessary for participants to join.
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Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...k/ba-p/1364522

:)

nolafotoknut · May 27, 2020

Group Email In Outlook 2016? Need Help!

Hi guys,

I have a client with a problem in outlook 2016 with her not been able to do a group email. She said she could just click on the group button on version 2007 outlook and then (I guess) select the group of people you wish to send a email to. But in this new version she cant as the group button or selection is greyed out. I honestly have no clue as I don't use the program but was wondering if anyone on here has any idea?

I have uploaded a pic of a screen shot of her outlook 2016 with the greyed out group option.

If anyone has any clue or suggestions to give me to give to her that would be great *Smile

Thanks!
Click to expand...

The screen shot looks like that's where she would CREATE a new group. What is on the "Send/Receive" tab?

Check this site out...

How to Create Custom Groups in Outlook 2016 | Laptop Mag

After step 7, it tells you how to send to a group.

Brink · May 27, 2020

Introducing Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS and later for Android

Play My Emails in Outlook and get time back in your day

So you’re on the train trying to read your emails. Getting ready for work is taking longer than expected. You’re in your car thinking about what’s new in your inbox and what’s in store for you today. These are common moments in the daily life of busy professionals that could be filled with more meaningful or productive activities. Time is precious, at home and at work, and taking the time to stay on top of your personal communications and commitments may be time better spent doing other things.

Microsoft AI has made great progress driving innovation for companies. And we are well on our way helping people change the world for Good. How can AI help people get time back in their day so they can focus on spending time with the people in their lives that matter most? AI in Microsoft 365 is leading the approach to put people at the center and use intelligent, personalized experiences to transform your productivity.

Today we are very excited to introduce Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS that utilizes Cortana, your personal productivity assistant, to catch up on what’s new in your inbox so you can get time back in your day. With an intelligent read out of your emails, natural language interaction with Cortana and a user interface designed for people on the move, you can stay organized, on top of what matters and get back to living life outside your inbox.

Outlook for iOS and Android is an integrated email and calendar app that now provides a unique way to interact with your inbox using AI with a personal assistant. This represents a significant shift in the way you manage your email and time management. Outlook, together with Cortana and Microsoft 365 delivers innovation in your inbox with personalized productivity experiences. Play My Emails is the first Cortana feature to be an integral part of the Office 365 core experience. This means that it is the first Cortana-related capability where Cortana has met specific requirements set out in the Office 365 section of the Microsoft Trust Center and the Online Service Terms (OST).

You can choose how you’d like to listen to your new emails with masculine and feminine voices for Cortana. Play My Emails is rolling out with a new masculine voice option.

Play My Emails is starting to roll out today to customers in the United States in Outlook for iOS following later in Outlook for Android. So when you’re in transit, multi-tasking or driving to where you need to get to next, catch up and act on emails even when your hands are busy with other things. Check it out!

Now let’s dive into the details:

Designed for mobile experiences

The new user experience is optimized for people on the move and ideal when connected to an audio device. Play My Emails has a simplified user experience with large visual assets and touch targets that provide context about your emails at a glance. You can use one finger to swipe to the next message or act on a message, or use voice commands for touch-free email triage. The experience provides images of the people who sent you the emails in a bright and bold way so you can quickly identify the sender, or don’t look at all – just listen!

New user experience - Play My Emails

Play my emails delivers a seamless experience with Bluetooth-enabled wireless or wired audio devices such as headphones or your car audio. When you reply and provide a quick response to an email, the mic on your phone is used. It’s helpful to know that the controls on headphones with playback options such as Forward or Back can also be used to skip to new messages in your inbox. The microphone on our iPhone will only engage when you say “Hey Cortana” during the playback of your emails and when Cortana finishes reading out an email and listens for voice commands.

Following our initial launch of Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS, we plan to add functionality specifically designed for the new Surface Earbuds. In addition to the immersive sound offered by the Earbuds to listen to your emails, we’re bringing the software capabilities into Outlook to simplify the set up for Bluetooth Low Energy that offers increased battery life and enhanced voice input via the Surface Earbuds microphone.

Play My Emails - Designed for when you're on the move

Not just text-to-speech, it’s AI

What makes Play My Emails transformational is the intelligent technology that is used to read out your emails. Let’s watch this video so you can learn how Cortana personalizes the experience by keeping you in the center of the conversation.

Play My Emails starts with a summary – how many emails are new in your Focused Inbox in the last 24 hours and are there changes to your day? It’s helpful to know out of the gate if you’ll have time to listen to all your new emails as Cortana estimates the time it will take to read them out to you.

Based on Outlook’s integrated Calendar, Cortana first reads out messages that help you stay organized such as updates to scheduled events. Perhaps more importantly, Cortana also identifies if you now have a conflict in your schedule due to the changes that may have just landed in your inbox.

Keeping you at the center of the experience means that Cortana knows where you are in time and relative to when your inbox was updated with each message. The readout does not just provide you with the email timestamp however. Your personal assistant let’s you know how long ago, whether just a few minutes ago, about an hour ago, you received each email “An hour ago, you received an email from…”

With information from Microsoft Graph, Cortana identifies the sender of each email in relationship to you, such as your manager, or if was sent to a distribution list and how many people are included in the recipient list. You see, this experience is not just a readout of the text in your inbox, it about how the intelligent technology gives more context that is relevant to you. Cortana synthesizes the information in the message header and meta data and marries it with the insights about you and information from apps and services that power Office 365. This provides a more meaningful and contextual readout.

The Play My Emails experience is like having a conversation with your personal assistant. If you have a series of messages that are part of a conversation but arrive in your inbox at disparate times, Cortana stitches them together in a logical sequence and reads them out to you in a way that gives you the full context of the conversation in one connected experience. This helps you get caught up on the whole thread in a way that feels natural.

And a conversation with your personal productivity assistant should be just that, a two way, private conversation. As mentioned, the microphone on your iPhone is only used when you’re using Play My Emails. You can say “Hey Cortana” to interrupt the readout and provide simple commands or reply to a message with a short, dictated response.

Catch up with what's new in your inbox during your commute

You don’t need to lose time if the content of a message is full of graphical information, or is a long one and you don’t have time or the inclination to hear it out. Conversely, if emails contain information you should be aware of such as an attachment, links, embedded files or bulleted lists, Cortana will let you know which emails are better read on a screen or you can chose to act on important ones straight away. You can flag for later, skip or archive emails just like you can with your customizable swipe options in your Outlook inbox. Most of the swipe options available in Outlook for iOS Settings are supported and mirrored in the Play My Emails interface so swiping left or right to triage your email when using Play My Emails is consistent and takes advantage of your muscle memory.

In the beginning

The genesis for this capability came from the opportunity to explore how to design for things we cannot see. Microsoft embarked on a user-centric research project to find out what goes on behind the scenes for people who are sight impaired. Either figuratively or literally, how do you get oriented, through voice, when you might not have visual landmarks? So if you are visually impaired or even situationally blind, for example when you’re walking or driving or otherwise distracted, what is input is required to accomplish tasks such as reading your email. Through this research Microsoft learned the essence of what input or information is important to get to what is truly meaningful. This project involved volunteers from the school of the blind so we could learn the tactics when translating their needs to voice enabled capabilities.

Play My Emails - when your eyes and hands may be busy with other things

Outlook is all about helping you organize your life, stay in control of your day and on top of what matters. Using intelligent technology to get things done fast and with reduced the effort so you can get time back in your day and spend it with people that matter most to you. That includes getting time back when you need to stay on top of your personal communications and commitments. Cortana is your personal productivity assistant now built into Outlook. This represents a significant shift in how you interact with your inbox.

Play My Emails is starting to roll out today and may take several weeks to reach all US customers. Once it’s available to you, please share with us what you think. This is a significant step in our journey and we plan to bring more voice capabilities and enable deeper conversations between you and Outlook. Looking forward, we expect to expand specific time management scenarios, include more emails and enable additional actions in your conversations with Cortana. In the meantime, learn about other exciting Microsoft 365 AI innovations and other announcements we’re making at our Microsoft Ignite 2019 Outlook sessions.
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Read more: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ay/ba-p/930243

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Melvis · May 27, 2020

Group Email In Outlook 2016? Need Help!

Hi guys,

I have a client with a problem in outlook 2016 with her not been able to do a group email. She said she could just click on the group button on version 2007 outlook and then (I guess) select the group of people you wish to send a email to. But in this new version she cant as the group button or selection is greyed out. I honestly have no clue as I don't use the program but was wondering if anyone on here has any idea?

I have uploaded a pic of a screen shot of her outlook 2016 with the greyed out group option.

If anyone has any clue or suggestions to give me to give to her that would be great *Smile

Thanks!

Windows 10: New Play My Emails feature in Outlook for iOS

New Play My Emails feature in Outlook for iOS

New Play My Emails feature in Outlook for iOS

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