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Javier Soltero: The Outsider Microsoft Tapped To Reinvent Outlook (windowsitpro.com)
v3rgEz writes: In a wide ranging interview, IT Pro talks with Microsoft's Javier Soltero about his plans to help Redmond get its groove back when it comes to email, walking a fine line between keeping traditional Outlook users (and IT administrators) happy while radically reworking software that hasn't seen a huge shakeup since 2003.
MS will do it later, anyway.
"while radically reworking software that hasn't seen a huge shakeup since 2003."
Oh yeah, because sane people really want THAT! Particularly if the "huge shakeup" is only being done because the software hasn't had a "huge shakeup" since n number of units of time. I'm sure the new Outlook is going to be great!
Outlook isn't the fucking problem, exchange and its bastardised architecture is.
To this day I cannot fathom why companies would ever roll out a proprietary exchange setup when there are better solutions available, at a significantly lower cost. Solutions that are more reliable, more secure and better supported cross platform.
- Dan
Please just make it much less of a steaming pile of sh!t than it is.
Our secretarial staff run the Windows version of Outlook under Parallels because the Mac version is so bad.
Missing features, extremely poor interface design, crashes, trying to manage multiple users diaries is like using battery acid to give a face lift.
JarJar Binks is less annoying
>> keeping traditional Outlook users (and IT administrators) happy while radically reworking software that hasn't seen a huge shakeup since 2003
And...why would you want to do that? Microsoft Office has basically remained unchanged since the late 1990s and it's still raking in money. Outlook "competitors" like Thunderbird are still dropping like flies and you want to piss off your huge customer base to...what exactly? Follow Marissa down the tech drain?
So M$ missed the boat on search and social media. They really ought to put their big brains on What's Next in computing, not "re-inventing" one of their dinosaur products.
So the one thing that they didn't miss the boat on (integrated mail/calendaring platform) and you just dismiss it a dinosaur product. And while they might have been late to the search market, they are the second biggest player. It's still respectable to come second the mighty Google.
But the strangest notion that you have is that you think that a company can only work on one product at once. They can easily have one department working on updating Outlook while still researching new markets and finding new ways to ruin Windows.
And -now- we know who is responsible for the slow, downward spiral of what Outlook has turned into since the 2003 client. It's horrible! I regret ever upgrading to 16 from '07. But it's the "standard" in the industry, it's what everyone uses, so we've -got- to upgrade!
Blah!
It's good to know just whose responsible for this train wreck.
Grr!
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
The biggest problem with Outlook isn't the UI, it's that it stinks at search. It takes FOREVER to search all your folders if you have any significant amount of email, and what it does find is often not relevant.
I for one am thankful that my company has moved to GMail for business.
I recently had the latest and greatest Office 2016 foisted upon me.
At best everything is harder to see (I mean, what's up with greyed out backgrounds for text boxes in Excel that used to be white? Sure it "looks nicer" but now you have to just "know" you can type there...)
Moving strongly into the Windows 10 way of doing things, pretty much just means everything you want to do is an extra click or two away... and not obviously labeled.
As far as Outlook in particular, it acts differently than all other apps for mousing over the minimize/maximize/close buttons - they don't highlight when the window doesn't have focus. If you have the non-gaudy color scheme, that makes it really hard to see.
Everything in general is harder to see. Come on, this is a "work" app, it is not supposed to be subtle. I doubt anyone is using Outlook because they like the way it looks!
I guess Microsoft is trying to catch up with Apple in skipping the "affordance" and "signifiers" steps of good design.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You are misunderstanding Microsoft. Microsoft is not a software company! Microsoft is an EVIL company that uses software to deliver evil. You are saying that Exchange delivers evil very well. That is the entire purpose.
My opinion, shared by many others.
Moz wants it gone. It works well as an Outlook substitute.
Did anyone else think that 'tapped' was actually 'trapped', as in MS locked the guy in their basement and made him work on Outlook until they were satisfied with the results?
Given the results thus far, maybe Soltero is still stuck in the basement.
Second biggest doesn't mean shit when you control the default browser and search page on the dominant OS in the market. The fact they are second is actually pretty humiliating in my opinion.
Or it just shows that having the default browser on the dominant OS doesn't mean as much as you think it did. People are used to using the term google as a verb, so it is difficult to dislodge that mindset.
Microsoft isn't going to get humiliated because they didn't meet your expectations. They should be as humiliated as Linux is having such a tiny segment of the desktop market when it is the $free option - and I doubt that this is a position that you would take.
...where a law is passed mandating death by firing squad for people who abuse the word "tapped" when they just mean someone was assigned a job. It's meant to sound like some sacrosanct honor bestowed by some high and regal order. In truth it is just PR wankery and I am sick of hearing it.
FTA:
He pointed to the implementation of âoelikesâ and âoementionsâ in the Outlook clients as examples of changes that he thinks are helpful.
In a sane world, that alone would disqualify him for the position.
They never understood email. And the article is mostly about streamlining the UI (Which was enormously cluttered; which idiot had the idea you need to have html mark-up in emails anyway? No wonder...)
Subsequent innovations, like the recent change to use MAPI over HTTP as the default connectivity protocol
WTF?
Yes, that explains everything. They still don't understand email.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
What's Exchange?
Please, please ditch Outlook's current Word-as-HTML-editor and renderer and replace them with something that can at least implement the full suite of HTML 4 and CSS 3 if not HTML 5 ... and then open source it so all mail clients feel the pressure to upgrade! (Javascript need not apply, thank you!)
As someone responsible for systems that have to send out formatted emails from professional scientific systems it bugs the shit out of me that I either have to write in the lowest common denominator that common mail clients likely support (a stripped down version of HTML 2 with no real CSS) or I have to render things into images (which makes them useless for indexing and searching). It doesn't matter how much you explain it to them, it's just not possible for PHBs to understand why their HTML mails in Outlook/Gmail/Kollab/Lotus can't be as pretty as the Browser/Safari web pages on their shiny pocket device.
You have provided evidence that most people don't know how to change their default search engine, not that a lot of people like Bing.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"Javier co-founded Acompli in 2013 .. Acompli was acquired by Microsoft for $200 million in 2014" ref
"We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
"Copy Gmail"
Now, where is my $500,000 paycheck, or does my name have to be Javier for this advice to be worth something?
...keeping traditional Outlook users (and IT administrators) happy...
So, in other words, Outlook is going to continue to suck.
To be fair, there are FOSS solutions that do these things on a local/group basis. There's lots of groupware that provides most of these functions.
But I do have to admit that Microsoft has the whole stack, if you want to buy into it and pay the price. I don't agree that the individual elements of the stack are anything like best in class, but the integration is definitely there, and it's scalable beyond most FOSS groupware (at least as far as I know the market).
To be fair, there is NO FOSS option that compares and anyone that states otherwise has not used Outlook/Exchange.
Before you even think of suggesting Zimbra, or Kolab, just forget it. None of these comes even vaguely close. The closest option to Outlook/Exchange is the very proprietary Novell GroupWise. Yes it's still going. The next closest thing is GMail/GCal, which is also proprietary and lacks the Outlook(desktop client) component, instead offering a shit web interface. (In fairness, it's very good for a web interface from a technical, but it's pure shit compared to the desktop client interface) Also, anyone thinking about suggesting Thunderbird against GMail, just STFU!
Gnome Evolution is a FOSS desktop client that mimics Outlook, reasonably well and offers some integration as an Exchange client. Ironically, Evolution is mostly a Novell product these days. But, it's still the crude, cumbersome and buggy kludge that all FOSS mimics tend to be.
I'm sorry for bashing on you. But, to be fair, you're completely wrong and there are NO FOSS analogs to Outlook and Exchange together.
But, there's now hope for the FOSS options as Microsoft's redesign will surely destroy Outlook.
I loved Outlook on my SBS 2003 box with local Exchange server. Especially being able to look at contacts and have a catalog of events and emails linked to the individuals. But they stripped that out and moved the functionality into their CRM product which I could never get to behave reasonably. Then Exchange started to eat emails from specific individuals -- get picked up, go into the sorting hat and just vanish without a trace. Ben a while but it seems each new version is just a bit more disfunctional. Tried the built-in mail in Win10 (also called Outlook) but agree that it was not pleasant. Use eM client with Gmail now -- seems reasonably responsive and stable. Dont know where MS thinks they are going but its not anyplace I want to go. Sad...
When we'd have an article on Emacs RMAIL. M$ Lookout! would have been laughed off the site. How times have changed.
"I have what.. three choices of 'theme' now? White, 'light grey' and 'dark grey' - none of which are much use in allowing me to distinguish between parts of the interface.."
Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2011 (Mac) let you see what is happening. The stupid 2013 themes should be called "blinding white", "white on white", and "white on extremely light taupe". Somebody ought to get fired over that design.
While they're at it, they could make an Android mail app that doesn't threaten me that "IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY I WILL DELETE ALL YOUR EMAIL AND MAYBE YOUR KIDS, TOO FOR GOOD MEASURE."
Is there any hope for this. It still rankles me, 30 years later, that Microsoft was able to force that stupidity down the throats of Corporate America. Every day I have to deal with people who reply to the top post with out reading any of the detail, often voluminous, that is tucked away 3 or 4 layers down and does not reply to all the members of the original message.
Oh, and ditch all of the cutesy formatting which takes up precious bandwidth and storage.
Oh, well, back to chasing the kids off my lawn :-(
It is both - neither Outlook nor Exchange support standards like CalDav and CardDav - it is like having a Web browser and Web server that do not support HTML5.
Outlook for Mac (yes, the new version) does not even support the Microsoft method of Exchange access, which for desktop clients is MAPI. Nor does it even support the mobile data exchange method, which is ActiveSync. Mac users are stuck using EWS. That Exchange supports 3+ different access methods for Outlook clients, depending upon platform (Windows == MAPI; MAC == EWS; iOS & Android == ActiveSync) says a lot about Exchange's retarded design, internal complexity, and general frailty. Imagine having three different, incompatible versions of HTML5 your web server needed to send to clients depending upon if the client OS was Windows, Mac, or Mobile - all for the same data and your will begin to fathom the stupid and technological debt Microsoft Outlook group is laboring under.
This guys first job should be to start from scratch - Outlook/Exchange is in a much worse spot than IE was ever at.
Nothing short of a redesign from scratch could save what has one of the worst user interfaces in wide use today. Hardly better than Notes, which is notably horrible.
Outlook continues to be a frustrating experience no matter how many times its been supposedly improved over the years.
I would look for an entire new approach such as the likes of mailbird.
I've replaced it for all my mail personal accounts and its been pretty solid.
Note: It's still in its infancy and as far as I know there is no activesync support yet unfortunately.
...we need to provide some useful guidance to Microsoft.
My problem is that like all "one-size-fits-all" products, Outlook is equally unusable by virtually anyone who tries to use it.
To me, the first question: Is Outlook an eMail client, or is it a Personal Information Manager? I can use Gmail if all I want is to send/receive/categorize mail. But, what I want is an integrated PIM: My eMail, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks, all together in one common place, and integrated with each other. Why, for example, do I have to work so hard to put someone's eMail address in the "To:" field (click the field, open Contacts, search for the name...which is poorly implemented in the first place)? I should be able to start typing the user's name (say, last name first, or first name first, depending on your preference setting), and it should provide me with a number of entries, until I provide enough information to reduce it down to some small number (also configurable; say, 10), from which I can select my intended recipient(s) for that eMail. Why can't Calendar and Task documents be directly linked to the Contact(s) they include (if any), so I can see all my transactions centered around a particular person, all in one place, both past and future.
Think of the Real-Estate Broker trying to deal with multiple, on-going offers and bids and other questions. How is that stuff organized? It's organized by ADDRESS of the subject property. What makes it easier than to give the user a map to pick from, and--after they've got it all set up--the names of Buyers and Sellers associated with the address involved in the transaction? Then, link all the Tasks, Appointments, Buyers, Sellers and Others (lawyers, CPAs, etc.). And, provide a way to link to other documents, on- or off-line (e.g., draft contracts). THAT makes the customers' life easier, because all he/she thinks about every day are properties, uniquely identified by address. Click on the map of properties for which that broker has contracts (to sell, lease, rent or buy), and everything is available. In other words: Provide a platform for which experts in a field can build a user-oriented experience, without having to get all users to comply/conform to ideas spawned by some group of geeks writing the code for the product. These would become the "new apps" for Outlook, and another competitive market is built up.
The second question: Why does the GUI have to be so clumsy, so artificial, and so hard to customize? Give me a starting point for the GUI...maybe 10 possible templates from which to choose: "Friends and Family" and "Small Business" and "Enterprise" and "Smartphone". THEN, let me customize if I want.
The third question: Why do things have to have bizarre names known only to M$ and geeks? "File / Options" is an example...What the @#%&(& does Options have to do with File? Call it what it is: Personalization, and give me a place (out of the way, like a drop-down list in the right margin of the app) where I can go do that. Burying things under complex menus with bizarre names picked by geeks is not user-friendly. And don't get me started on the transmogrification of the common word "Ribbon."
If "Outlook" is the product name, in short, give real-live people in real-live situations the ability to apply a template (which can then be customized) to provide an up-to-the-minute status report, and to "peer" into (aka have an "outlook" on) the near future. It should work for Granny, with a far-flung network of offspring and friends (super-simple menu), and it should work for the CEO/Admin team, so they can work seamlessly together via computer, cloud or smartphone (separate menus for CEO and for Admin, each working on the same data.
Outlook is STILL stuck in the 2003 era, and my Outlook 2013 shows it. It's time for a radical re-think of what a useful tool, all-in-one (not in separate applications) Outlook COULD be, instead of just putting another coat of paint over the old girl and let her continue to look grotesque and work ineptly.
Nothing says "back", "home", and "list/stack of stuff" like triangle, circle, square.
Another gratuitous UX change that makes the function even more abstract.
HTML is way too complicated. Why would you foist a web layout/design language on grandma email user? All we really need is Wordpad level RTF support. The attack surface is a lot smaller if you have fewer features.
And then threw it away. It's supposed to be Tools->Options.
For all Outlook's faults, well enumerated here, some of us are simply stuck with it, Exchange, and AD.
So please Microsoft, for the sake of all the users' sanity out there DON'T FRIGGING CHANGE THE COLOR OF OUTLOOK'S ICON! KEEP IT YELLOW!
Users know what to look for, and that level of stability is helpful to them, and to use IT admins... ESPECIALLY when the damn Windows GUI changes dramatically *with every version*. We have enough to think about in this crazy internet world, don't make us do extra POINTLESS effort of learning how to find the GD email program icon again. Why you made it Blue --confusing it with the icon for Word-- is beyond me. It has only annoyed people, and for ZERO gain.
Please do us a favor and stop torturing the vast user-base with "shakey-uppey" changes that reduce usability.
Bing actually pays people to use it: partnerships, tokens and free gift cards style.
make it stop crashing, that would be a real advance.
Yeah, and not only does it have these lousy color schemes, I defy you to tell by looking whether it has keyboard focus. That's because they took away the top bar, which used to be a dark color if an app had focus, and a greyer color if it didn't. So you could tell at a glance where your keystrokes would go.
I *wish* it were stuck in 2003, then we wouldn't have that Ribbon, and the options menu item (not ribbon icon!) would be in the right place.
This is a shred off-topic, but I've converted so many people to Thunderbird from Outlook that I'm losing count. When you add the Google calendar and contacts sync extensions and Lightning, you have a 100% free solution to the problem of calendar and contacts sync that also works with Android and iOS devices. Outlook 2013 does one-way read-only syncing of Google Calendar and that's fairly useless. If you move the Thunderbird data folder between machines, you move the entire configuration and all of the stored data that matters, including stored passwords and account configurations. Unless you're married to Exchange, Outlook is grossly inferior to Thunderbird in almost every way imaginable.