New Contact Support feature in Outlook 2016 for Mac We are excited to announce that Contact Support (aka, in-app support) is now available to all users on the latest Outlook for Mac version 15.34 (170515) and later. New Contact Support feature in Outlook 2016 for Mac We are excited to announce that Contact Support (aka, in-app support) is now available to all users on the latest Outlook for Mac version 15.34 (170515) and later.
I completely agree either way, and having a second (or multiple) phone apps is counterproductive. O365 Groups are integrated, so integrating Teams the same way would be ideal or neccesary, really. Being able to send/receive chats inside Outlook, where most users are already paying attention to, along with files and calendars for those teams would be a win-win-win. The adoption rate is paramount. Teams will die if users don't embrace it and the easiest way to get them to is to put the functionality into existing and familiar interfaces. I can't fathom why it wouldn't be on the roadmap.
The Outlook interface has Skype integration, Groups integration, heck even Starbucks integration, but not this??? Cray cray I say. Microsoft Team!
Outlook Email. While it should be possible to invoke one from the contact in another, they are not the same thing nor should we encourage them to be made to be so. Google tried to combine sync (IM) and async (email) conversations a few years back in a product called Wave - it didn't work because our usage requirements for IM (conversational) are/should be quite different than for email (announcement). I recommend a lot of user testing before putting IM messages into the Outlook inbox message stream.
I couldn't disagree more, although I agree completely that careful testing is always a good idea. Google inbox and hangouts are, in fact, integrated and work fantastically together.
I regularly use the single pane of glass for both IM and Email. They are also not in the same message stream, as you assumed these w/could be. Outlook is already integrated today with Skype for IM, Video, conferencing and Voice chats. Your suggestion is similar to saying that a 'calendar' or a 'task list' don't belong in Outlook. There's no good reason Outlook, which is arguably the most ubiquitous desktop enterprise communication application of all time, can not handle a slightly different type of communication.
No need to apologize! I like a discussion, even an argument here and there;) I'm quite the pessimist myself.
The whole point is to get communications centralized. The UC world is here and it's easier to gain adoption in exisiting, adopted & familiar tools. I agree everyone has different needs but keeping these spaces combined is an excellent way to change user behavior over time. My users, as well as a large contigency of corporate users, practically live inside of Outlook. To me it's the path of least resistance to accomplish the goals you and I share.
Agreed that half-baked and plug-ins are the least desirable way to go about this, which is why I always advocate for full integration. Google inbox and hangouts are not integrated. Unless I have missed somthing there is no way to share you email thread into a hangouts thread.
Maybe you can share the content of an email in a hangouts thread but I am not even sure about that one. You can create hangouts messages from the gmail app i guess but they are still seperate communications and the hangout standalone apps are much better. With all the integration app tabs and things in Teams it would be very hard to integrate the full feature set in Outlook. Just look at the utter mess groups is. Maybe a send to teams at most to share an email with a team. Indeed, the need for Outlook might not be what we want to encourgage.
If at all possible I'm trying to get people not using outlook anymore, but solely rely on Teams. However like mentioned here before external communication usually will stil go over Outlook/email. I've actually explorered the product a bit further and found an answer to our prayers, to keep all communication in the channel, there's an email address directly to the channel. So when folks send me mails related to a specific topic, I'm just forwarding this email thread to our channel.:-) Love this product!;-). Unfortunately, without Outlook O365 app none of the Calendar or Task comment features work in MS Teams. Our company does not allow O365 Outlook and requires the Office 2016 Outlook client.
Without a way to link an Outlook client to MS Teams most of the group and team collaboration (via Calendars or Comments) is broken. So although the communication models are different for IM (sync) and Email (async), there needs to be a way to share calendars and contact lists to already existing Enterprise resources. It make no sense to recreate these just for MS Teams. We live in a polycultural electonic society. Some of us want to eliminate email/outlook from the communication mix. Others of us want the polyglot of communications to all go through one source, i.e. Outlook email.
To say one 'should' do it one way or another doesn't work in this context. The best solution is to have the option of routing communications either way. Why force others to think like you do? I think these preferences correlate to age groups.
Over 40 likes outlook, under 40 likes not using outlook. Of course this is a gross generalization, but I think there is a general relationship. And I'm over 40:) 'The miracle of communication is that occassionally it happens'. Such a fascinating discussion and product. We are trying teams in a small group internally and I asked my colleagues 'I wonder if this integrates with Outlook'. The question is mainly because I focus my attention to email most of the day.
However, we also use Salesforce (Chatter), Skype for Business, RingCentral Messaging, and not trying out Teams. I wish there were like a Flipboard for the desktop where I could see the 'most recent' communications in one place. Messaging is so much more powerful than email for productivity in my opinion. It seems like most of my email is littered with threads that could have been in a messaging application where I can respond or ignore to the 'thank you's', 'me too's', 'adding so and so', etc. If I'm going to switch to Teams, it has to be a corporate-wide adoption and it has to be well integrated into my Office tools.
Let's add to the mix document collaboration with O365 online. We actually thought of using Teams as an effort to collaborate better on an online Excel spreadsheet. I can't begin to understand why Teams would not be fully integrated with Outlook. As a Managed Microsoft Partner, we regularly use both Skype and Teams to conduct business meetings with both clients and Microsoft. Skype make it easy. When I set up a meeting, I just hit the button in Outlook and it schedules a Skype call and includes the link and all conference info in the meeting invite.
Teams offers no such integration making it very annoying to use. We are seeing Teams slowly overtake Skype as the meeting platform of choice, both with major clients as well as the Microsoft field. However, I'll avoid it until there is the same level of integration with Outlook that Skype has. In fact, I'm not of the opinion that Teams offer much more for meetings than Skype does. So, for me personally, when I'm setting up a meeting I will continue to use Skype until Microsoft makes it just as easy to use Teams. I sincerely hope it becomes part of the roadmap very soon! Wrote: Currently no plans to embed it in the Outlook desktop client.
I can't begin to understand why Teams would not be fully integrated with Outlook. As a Managed Microsoft Partner, we regularly use both Skype and Teams to conduct business meetings with clients and Microsoft. Skype make it easy. When I set up a meeting, I just hit the button in Outlook and it schedules a Skype call and includes the link and all conference info in the meeting invite. Teams offers no such integration making it very annoying to use.
We are seeing Teams slowly overtake Skype as the meeting platform of choice, both with major clients as well as the Microsoft field. However, I'll avoid it until it offers the same level of integration with Outlook that Skype has. In fact, I'm not of the opinion that Teams offer much more for meetings than Skype does. So, for me personally, when I'm setting up a meeting I will continue to use Skype until Microsoft makes it just as easy to use Teams.
I sincerely hope it becomes part of the roadmap very soon! For the people that use the Outlook desktop client, I would very much like to see Teams integrated. Why should I have to use two apps to accomplish the same basic function? E-mail and IM are just messages. A user writes a message, sends it, user receives it, reads it. There is nothing more or less instant about either. I can ignore an IM as easily as an E-mail.
I can respond to either just as quickly. IM doesn't provide any real benefit over e-mail. If Teams messages are integrating into Outlook, then I can continue using just Outlook to read the message and send a reply.