M365 Changelog: Play My Emails in Outlook launching internationally

MC258424 – Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS and Android will soon be rolling out in English worldwide. The feature has rolled out in UK, India, Australia, and Canada (MC224750, November 2020).

These updates are related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82004.

When this will happen:

  • Microsoft will begin rolling this out in July and expect it to be complete by September

How this will affect your organization

The experience will be automatically available to users who have their language set to English. Below is an example of where to change language setting on an iPhone device.

Play My Email will be optimized for users outside the US, UK, India, Canada, or Australia with messages read out loud in a British accent. 

End users will see a message at the bottom of the inbox screen once they receive the app update with this feature. Tap the message to launch the on-boarding process. 

With Play My Emails set up and turned on, Cortana will intelligently read emails when a user start Play My Emails by tapping the play button in the menu sidebar. When connected to a Bluetooth or audio device or the native iOS device speaker, start Play My Emails by tapping the play button at the bottom of the inbox or in the menu sidebar.>

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End users can also opt in or out of Play My Emails by following these steps:

  1. Open Outlook for iOS or Android
  2. Go to Settings
  3. Select Play My Emails
  4. Turn off the toggle next to the account(s) you want to enable/disable

Play My Email is available Office 365, Outlook.com and Gmail accounts. However, you can play email from only one account at a time, even if you have Outlook set to All Accounts. Play My Emails requires an active network connection to the cloud.

What you need to do to prepare

Admins can manage the in-app experience with an app configuration setting from your mobile application management solution such as Microsoft Intune. You might want to notify your users about this new capability.