Microsoft launches Android Outlook Web App for Office 365 and Exchange
Microsoft has unveiled an Android version of Outlook Web App (OWA) for business editions of Office 365 and Exchange.
The OWA app for Android follows last year's launch of OWA for the iPhone and iPad and will mean that Android owners gain earlier access to new Exchange features, including the slew that Microsoft announced at this week's Exchange conference. OWA offers email, contact and calendar features for Office 365 subscribers.
"We know that nearly half of emails are now first seen on the phone. So it's clear that phone is becoming the primary screen for communications… On iPhone and iPad, we released the OWA app last year. And today we announced that we will be releasing the OWA app for Android as our latest step in that journey," Microsoft wrote on its Office blog on Monday.
One of those new OWA features in Office 365 is codenamed Clutter, which promises to separate important email from the tons of junk that often fill inboxes.
Clutter, which will probably renamed when it is released, uses Microsoft's machine learning techniques to look for indicators that reveal the importance of certain email messages or senders.
"For example, if you completely ignored Juan's email about his recent vacation pictures, that message was likely unimportant to you – ie, clutter. On the other hand, if you both read and responded to Cathy's email about her new budget proposal, that message was likely important to you – ie, not clutter," Microsoft said.
Similar to Google's inbox-clearing efforts in Gmail, Clutter in OWA will push important email to the top and drop the less interesting stuff to the footer of the inbox. The user can also tag clutter items as non-clutter if they choose, to make sure similar stuff doesn't get sidelined in future. They'll also be able to delete all clutter email in a single click.
OWA will also be more tightly integrated with OneDrive for Business (formerly known as SkyDrive Pro), giving users the ability to share files between Microsoft's cloud storage and the OWA app as an email attachment.
This includes uploading a file from a device to OneDrive and sending it as a link in an email and attaching a file in an email through OWA directly from OneDrive. Microsoft is keeping the look and feel of files sent either way similar but will use a cloud icon to indicate when the file is being sent as a OneDrive download.
Microsoft is also polishing up group collaboration, which will support real-time co-authoring on Office Online documents stored in One Drive and can be viewed alongside the OWA app.
Finally, Microsoft will use Yammer-inspired groups lists within OWA to bring better collaboration across the Office suite.
"Both Outlook Web App and Yammer show the same conversations for the same groups. This means however you prefer to work – whether you live only in email, only in Yammer, or both — you can participate in the group. We're creating a collaboration tool that will allow everyone in your organization to work more closely together, in their preferred manner," Microsoft said.