Hi, my name is JJ Cadiz, and it is my pleasure today
to talk to you about the Evolution of Outlook.
Whether you've been an Outlook customer for 20 years,
or like my daughter, it's been more like 20 weeks,
thank you for putting so much trust into Outlook
and for using it for so many of your critical tasks,
both at work and at home.
We're continuing to invest heavily in Outlook,
and today I'll talk to you about two main areas
when it comes to the evolution of Outlook.
First, I'll talk about how we were bringing together
the various different Outlook clients
to present a single Outlook experience,
no matter what device you're running on
and all backed by a single service.
And second, I'll be talking about
how we are evolving the Outlook experience
to be a more connected part of Microsoft 365.
First, let's dive into how we're bringing
all our Outlooks together.
The different Outlooks were all built at different times
and on different tech stacks,
and one thing that's central to the evolution of Outlook
is how we're building towards a common architecture.
In this section, I'll talk for a bit
about the benefits of common architecture,
and then I'll talk about Microsoft Sync Technology,
which is our shared architecture for sync.
And then finally, I'll talk about
how we're using web technology as one of our methods
to provide shared UI architecture.
But first, let's talk about the benefits
of common architecture.
Having a common architecture allows for several things.
It allows us to deliver features faster across endpoints.
When we do deliver those features,
it allows us to deliver experiences that are more consistent
and also stay consistent over time as we evolve them.
And also, delivering features in this way
is simply less expensive from an engineering point of view,
which means that we can deliver more value to you over time.
One of my favorite examples of the benefits
of common architecture with Outlook
is that Outlook is a member of the Office family,
which includes Word.
Now, Word is what gives you that great experience
when typing mails in Outlook,
and it also means that as more features are brought to Word,
those features that help you write excellent documents,
we can also bring to Outlook
to help you write excellent emails.
So let's go through a few examples.
Let's start with Outlook on the web.
First, you'll note a more advanced
spell checking experience here,
where if you're not sure which choice you want,
you can ask to see synonyms for the choices in the list,
and then use those to help you decide which choice you want.
Next, you'll see how we're adding even more info
to grammar suggestions
to help you decide the right thing to do.
And then the last thing that you'll see here
is that we're moving beyond spelling and grammar,
and even helping you with suggestions
for how to improve your writing,
even if your spelling and grammar are correct.
Now, let's look at the same experience,
but on Outlook for Windows.
Again, when you have a misspelled word,
and when you're looking at the choices,
if you'd like to see synonyms
to help you decide the right choice to make,
you can turn those on.
And when it comes to grammar,
you'll get more information about
why the suggestions are being made.
Now, let me flip over to another Outlook window
to allow me to show you Translator,
which is another great feature of Office.
Translator makes it easier to communicate across languages,
and with this new Translator,
I can translate an entire message,
I can opt into automatic translation,
or I can just translate a word or phrase,
whatever I need to help me fully understand the content.
Now let me change to one more Outlook window
to give you my last example
of a great feature we're getting in Outlook
because we have a common architecture with Office.
Let's take a look at the Immersive Reader.
Now let's say I want to read this mail
with the Immersive Reader turned on.
I can do that by going to the View tab
and selecting Immersive Reader.
This turns on the Immersive Reader contextual tab
in the ribbon, and from here,
I can customize the different ways to view my message.
If I want to view the message
with three lines of focus at a time, I can do that.
I can also customize the page color,
so if I want to use a black or pink background,
I can also do that.
And I can customize the width of each column,
so if I want to read this message with a narrow width,
I can do that.
Or if I want to read it wide, I can also do that.
And then when I respond to this mail,
I can keep the Immersive Reader turned on
and even if I choose to pop this mail out,
the Immersive Reader stays enabled there.
Those are just a few examples of how Outlook benefits
from having a common architecture with Office.
Next, let's talk about how we're bringing together
the different Outlook clients to have a common architecture
and the benefits that we see there.
Now, folks may recall that the different members
of the Outlook family were all built at different times
and also using different tech stacks.
The future we're building towards is a common sync stack
that we call Microsoft Sync Technology.
And we're also using web tech like React
for a shared architecture at the UI layer.
Let's talk about Sync first
and I'm going to switch over to my Mac.
This is the new Outlook for Mac.
It uses Microsoft Sync Technology, and because of that,
it has significantly better performance and reliability.
Now, remember, this is the same sync technology
that already powers Outlook for iOS,
and it's now available for Outlook for Mac.
Let's use my machine here
and see a demo of how much better the sync performance is.
This is a fresh install of Outlook,
and I'm going to go ahead here and add an account.
Now, what you're going to see is that within seconds,
Outlook has added the account and synced down my mail.
Not only that,
it's also populated my Calendar and Contacts,
and even my search results are available.
And we don't just get perf improvements
because we're using Microsoft Sync Technology.
Outlook for Mac is also getting features
that you've seen on other endpoints, but not here.
Snooze is a great example of a feature in Outlook on iOS
that's now available on the Mac
because of Microsoft Sync Technology.
Now let's talk about UI.
You've heard us talk in prior Ignites
about how we've moved Outlook on the web to React.
This has resulted in significant performance gains for UI,
but now we're taking things a step further.
We're taking features that are built in Outlook on the web,
extracting them, and then delivering them
across other Outlook endpoints.
We call this approach
Outlook on the web Powered Experiences,
or OPX for short.
Let's take a look at our first OPX feature, the Room Finder.
Here, we have Outlook on the web.
Outlook on the web has a brand new Room Finder,
and it's quite nice.
It has the ability to have you easily select locations,
floors, what capacity room you need,
and other properties of the room that you need to reserve.
Now, let's go over to Outlook on Windows.
Now we're going to do the same thing,
we're going to open a meeting,
and then we're going to bring up the Room Finder.
Now notice it's the same experience.
And to be clear, what you're seeing here isn't just a UI
that looks the same, it's actually the same code.
It's the feature from Outlook on the web
running inside Outlook on Windows.
Now this OPX approach
that we're using gets us a lot of benefits,
but one of the things that I'm most excited about
is that as we continue to evolve the Room Finder
in Outlook on the web,
the same experience is just going to show up
in other Outlook endpoints.
In fact, this Room Finder is even going to show up
in Outlook for the Mac.
That's a quick tour
on how we're evolving the Outlook architecture
to provide you not just a faster experience,
but also more consistent experience,
no matter what device you're using Outlook on.
Now, let's go ahead and change gears
and talk about how we're evolving Outlook
to provide you with a more connected experience
as a customer of Office 365.
Now, one of the powerful parts of Outlook
has always been how well it integrates Mail and Calendar.
Outlook has been a leader in the time management space
for quite a while,
and we're continuing that by listening to customers
and also watching the times and evolving our product,
especially with the shift towards more remote work.
Let's take a look at just one example.
So this is an example from Outlook on Windows
where you can change the settings, such that by default,
your meetings are not for the entire 30 or 60 minutes.
What a lot of us found as more work shifted to be remote
is that those little breaks we used to get
by walking between conference rooms
or between our offices and conference room,
we lost those little breaks,
and it turned out to be pretty challenging
to go through an entire day without having those breaks.
So this is an example of a feature
that we have where if you set it,
30-minute meetings can end for example, at 25 minutes,
and 1-hour meetings can end 10 minutes early.
And that's just one simple way
that you can change the settings in Outlook
to get a little bit of those little breaks back
throughout the day.
Now a feature that's coming to other endpoints,
here, you'll see Outlook on the web on the left.
And another example of a feature
that we're adding is the ability to say
that all meetings should by default get online coordinates.
You see that here in Outlook on the web on the left,
and then also in Outlook on iOS on the right.
This feature is coming to other Outlook endpoints too.
Now we know that integrations like that between Outlook
and programs like Teams can be a real time saver
and we're not stopping there.
A lot of the times I'll be in Outlook
and I'll know that there are some chats going on,
and I just want to take a quick look
to see if there's anything I need to reply to.
Let's go ahead and go to Outlook on the web
and take a look at some of the integrations
that we're working on.
So what you notice at the top right,
is that we have a signal that says 2,
and that means that I have two unread chats,
and if I want to take a look at them, I can do that here.
And if I decided I want to reply to one of them,
I can even just click there
and type a quick reply if I need to.
Now I'm going to change accounts
and show one more point of connection across Microsoft 365.
Activity also happens in documents,
and if someone mentions you in a document,
you can see that in your Notifications pane.
All of these features help keep you connected
to what's happening throughout Microsoft 365,
and they help you jump to different experiences
when you need to in order to get your work done.
Now, let's go back to Outlook on Windows for one last demo.
Now, remember what we talked
about earlier with OPX features?
Because that notifications pane was built
in Outlook on the web,
we were able to turn it into an OPX
and bring it here over to Outlook on Windows.
Now, the last thing I'm going to show
is how we're using web tech to do even more
to create a better connected experience
across Microsoft 365 and also to evolve Outlook.
You might have noticed
on the left a new icon here in Outlook.
Now Outlook on Windows has always had a Tasks module,
but as Microsoft 365 Task experience has evolved with To Do,
Outlook on Windows hasn't been able to benefit
from that same experience until now.
We're using OPX technology,
not just to remake certain features of Outlook
but also entire modules starting with To Do.
Now clicking this icon today just opens Edge
and takes you to To Do on the web,
but we'll be using that same OPX technology you saw earlier
to bring the To Do experience
inside our native Outlook clients,
just like you saw with the Room Finder.
To Do is just the first example
where we'll be remaking modules
and we're doing this not just
to give them a refreshed experience
that's also more connected across Microsoft 365,
but also to give them a common architecture
that will be consistent across your devices
and stay consistent over time.
And as we do this remaking,
we think that area where you used to switching
between Mail and Calendar is just going to outgrow its space,
so we're building this new strip on the left
to host these new modules.
Our team is so excited to bring you all these experiences.
We know how much you depend on Outlook
across all your devices,
and we can't wait to give you a faster, fresher,
more connected and consistent experiences
across all the devices where you use Outlook.
Now, we don't build these features all by ourselves.
Every year we talk with thousands of customers
to get their feedback and their input.
If you aren't already engaged with us,
the best way to get engaged is
to join the Office Insiders Program at the URL
that you see on your screen here.
By joining, you'll have a chance
to try out many of the features
that you've seen here in early builds
before they're released to prod,
and you'll be able to give us feedback
and help us decide if we need to make any changes
before we finalize them.
I hope you've enjoyed this talk,
and there are also a lot more talks here about Outlook
if you'd like to learn more.
Thank you so much for taking the time today
to learn about the Evolution of Outlook.