Microsoft will add “prompts” to the web version of its Outlook email service when replying to an email, reports CNews. This is a text prediction algorithm that reduces the time it takes to write letters.
As stated in the Microsoft “road map”, the new Outlook feature will be “educable,” and it will take the contents of the user’s mailbox as a basis for its development. In other words, for the most accurate selection of answers to a new electronic correspondence or just for writing a new letter, the algorithm will study the existing correspondence.
The exact timing of the integration of prompts in Outlook at the time of publication of the material was not known. According to The Verge, they will work until May 2020 and may appear in all applications of the Microsoft 365 cloud service, formerly known as Office 365, which also includes the web version of Outlook.
In the footsteps of Google
The idea of integrating prompts into the email service did not belong to Microsoft; it “spied” it on Google. Since April 2004, the Internet giant has been developing its own mail service Gmail, and its users have gained access to the tooltip for typing in May 2018.
The Google tool was called Smart Compose and was presented at the Google I/O 2018 conference. At the time of its debut, Google did not specify whether it planned to add tips for languages other than English.
Meanwhile, NIX Solutions made sure that on May 12, 2020, Smart Compose algorithms learned to work with a number of languages of the world.
The integration of tooltips in the cloud office service is also not new. In November 2019, according to The Verge, Google integrated Smart Compose into Google Docs, opening access to this tool for corporate customers.
Delayed Shipment
In addition to smart hints, Microsoft will add delayed send to the web version of Outlook. It will allow you to pre-select the time of dispatch and will make it possible, for example, to write a congratulatory letter a week before the event and set the automatic dispatch on the required day.
Microsoft does not name the exact timing of this feature in the web version of Outlook. According to The Verge, it will work until the end of the second quarter of 2020, that is, until June 30, 2020.
Outlook History
Outlook has existed as a mail program since 1997. The Outlook.com web service, to which prompts will be added along with delayed sending, appeared in the summer of 2012. Subsequently, the project was regularly updated and received global updates every few years. The first such update happened in February 2016, when the service moved to the Office 365 infrastructure, which allowed to increase its reliability and security. There are many new features that simplify working with mail and events.
In March 2018, after beta testing began in August 2017, Microsoft launched the transfer of users to the new version of Outlook.com. The changes affected almost all components, including design.