Microsoft: September 13 is the sunset date for Sunrise calendar
It's Sept. 1: The day after the Aug. 31 cut-off date by which Microsoft said it would shutter the standalone Sunrise Calendar app it acquired last year.
But it turns out Sunrise Calendar has received a reprieve for some unannounced period of time.
A Microsoft official provided PCWorld with the following statement yesterday:
"[W]e have chosen to wait a little longer in order to deliver a few more Sunrise-inspired features in Outlook. Once those features are released, the Sunrise app will officially be shut down."
In May, Microsoft officials said they were removing the Sunrise calendar app from the Apple and Google Play stores. As of Aug. 31, Microsoft planned to shut down the app so that it would cease working, officials said.
Microsoft initially announced in October that it planned to integrate the Sunrise calendar technology that it bought in February 2015 with its redesigned Outlook mobile apps for iOS and Android. The Outlook Mobile apps are built on the Acompli codebase that Microsoft bought when it acquired Acompli in December 2014.
In October last year, Microsoft officials said they planned to replace the standalone Sunrise app with the Outlook Mobile apps that would include built-in calendar functionality. But at that time, Microsoft execs also said they planned to leave Sunrise in market until all of its features were fully integrated into Outlook.
PCWorld notes some of the features in Sunrise that still are not part of Outlook Mobile's built-in calendaring, including integrations with various apps and services, like TripIt and Trello, the ability to display other "interesting" calendars, multiple reminder support, and desktop support.
Update (Sept. 13): Microsoft is sunsetting the standalone Sunrise calendar app on Sept. 13, officials said in a blog post.
"As of today, your (Sunrise) calendar will stop updating and any changes you make to it will not be reflected on any other platform. Tomorrow, you will be logged out of your account. Don't worry though, all the information held in your calendar will still be available on the original platform you were using (Gmail, iCloud, Outlook, etc.)."
Microsoft added the "interesting calendars" feature to Outlook Mobile for iOS and Android today. Interesting calendars was one of the Sunrise calendar features missing from Outlook Mobile on iOS and Android.