Outlook

Surprisingly, Microsoft has never included a central method to manage user autosignatures within the cloud or on-premises versions of Exchange. Which means that you must let users manage their signatures, build your own tools, or deploy a commercial solution.

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith shows you an easier way to schedule meetings using an add-in for Office 365 called FindTime.

The IT world often focuses on big changes and announcements instead of looking at how small changes can really make a difference. One example is how Microsoft has changed what happens when users recover deleted items to allow items go back to where they came. It's a great change, even if it is seven years overdue.

If you can control your workload, you can sleep better, feel less overwhelmed, and actually enjoy the calm moments. Matthew McDermott shares 5 tips for better managing your workload and time.

Outlook desktop includes Task and Contacts functionality that has not changed in years, which is why many users probably don’t use these client features. Mobile apps exploit Tasks and Contacts and make them much more usable.

Russell Smith shows you how to set up email rules in the Office 365 web portal.

Microsoft is obviously putting a lot of effort into improving the functionality available in the OWA and Outlook clients, but only for Office 365 users. It’s now got to the point where on-premises customers must be wondering where their next update will arrive. The answer may be “Never”.

Microsoft has updated the Outlook apps for iOS and Android so they can now access conversations in Office 365 Groups. It's a good step forward, if only maybe to reduce the number of Office 365 related apps you have to install on a phone.

Outlook 2016 click-to-run desktop clients are now getting the necessary code for the Focused Inbox feature. It's a good step forward when a really important client is upgraded with an important feature, but you kind of wonder what's happening for the poor-old on-premises community...

Shane Young and Todd Klindt discuss March patches, Microsoft Identity Management with SharePoint 2016, Shane's new computer, automatically created Office 365 groups, creation of direct reports groups in Outlook, not using @ in the SAMAccountName, SAM-Account-Name attribute specs, Outlook sign-in assistant, Azure active directory, integration with Github, and SQL data partners.

Exchange Online now boasts an “archive folder”, helpfully furnished to allow users to keep items they need to retain. Unless they have an archive mailbox. Or use Outlook auto-archive. It’s just a tad confusing.

My transition to an iPhone is fine and I have mastered Outlook for iOS. That is, except for Contacts, which are a problem because Outlook must obey Apple’s rules. And I won’t even discuss searching.

The Microsoft Teams application is now generally available. Lots has been done to improve Teams since its preview release and Microsoft has made many good updates. Some edges remain for Microsoft to work on, but Teams is now more than a valid competitor for Slack in the chat-based collaboration market.

Find out how to set up a task-based project dashboard.

The U.S. patent office granted IBM a patent in January that seems to cover email auto-reply. The only problem is that auto-replies existed a long time before IBM claimed to have invented them. But it’s all good now.