The Strategist

Microsoft unveils new Outlook , Sway feature



05/23/2015 - 02:37





Microsoft unveils new Outlook , Sway feature
American technology company Microsoft has released the new look of its messaging service Outlook .
 
The company announced earlier that the service will get design revamp and a range of new features. The new look includes a more refined inbox, featuring "Clutter", which can be trained to organize messages and place those most likely to be ignored in a separate folder. There are other new developments including search suggestions and refiners, link previews and pins and flags, as well as the addition of 13 new graphic design themes.
 
Besides Outlook, Microsoft has undertaken overhauls for a range of services including Office 365-based infrastructure. Though the new look is available only to a certain section of its users, a wide release will soon happen through an opt-in program over the coming weeks.
 
Microsoft is also now enabling Sway for organizations that have signed up for business and education Office 365 plans. First introduced in October, Sway is a mobile-friendly alternative to building presentations with tools like the company's own PowerPoint software. Users can drag-and-drop text, images and Web content to interactive presentations that automatically scale to fit smartphones, tablets and PC displays.
 
The cloud-enabled Web application supports content from an ever-expanding set of online sources, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and, of course, Microsoft's OneDrive file storage, share-and-sync platform. Sway automatically places the content into eye-pleasing layouts, allowing even users who lack design skills to craft shareable, eye-pleasing presentations.

 On the authoring front, the Sway team added a new Grid Card layout that automatically arranges text, images and videos into a consistent grid that adapts to various screen sizes. Sway accomplishes this with user-selectable Focus Points and by intelligently inspecting and cropping images to fit the grid.