Sneaking in a work from home day could soon be a bit trickier thanks to a new update coming to Microsoft Outlook.
The email provider is rolling out a new feature that will allow users to spot which of their co-workers or colleagues is currently in the office, and therefore possibly free for a quick meeting or able to reply to a message.
The update will use the Work Hours and Location information stored within Outlook to offer up this information, meaning there may be some awkward conversations if your colleagues believe you to be in the office.
In its entry in the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the company notes that the feature will be “always on”, meaning there may be no getting around what it represents as your office presence.
Wouldn’t your coworkers already know you’re working from home by, you know not seeing you at the office?
When I worked in an office, most of my team was in other offices across the world. But we had to be in the office for that TEAM BUILDING
> Go to the office
> All meetings are on teams because half the team works on other offices.
Even if the whole team is actually in the conference room…it’s one dude with a laptop who struggles to get the display working for 10 min then proceeds to just read the PowerPoint out loud.
None of this required me putting on pants or being part of traffic.
Yup.
Daily stand-up meeting
On the phone because we’re decentralized
Everyone’s actually sitting + hardly anyone’s even paying attention because they’re at their computers
That’s… incredibly dumb.
Even worse, it’s completely real. It was the common situation for me before corona. Also driving an entire day for a 1 hour meeting.
If your company is nationwide and has offices all over the country and you work on a distributed team where some people are on the west coast, some are central, and some are on the east coast. In this such event, none of your teammates will physically be able to tell if you are in the office. That’s what this feature is for.
So we can all continue to work from home, from a prescribed office of our employers choosing.
Ahhh the gigantic benefit of seeing a cubicle in the background of your zoom. Thanks Microsoft
We’re concerned that your home doesn’t look soul crushing enough. Please upgrade your home office by installing fluorescent tube lights and covering your walls with rough faded blue grey cloth, or we’ll need you to come into the office.
Oh boy, this sounds like it could get interesting! On one hand, it’s great that Outlook is trying to make our work lives more transparent and efficient. Scheduling meetings has always been a bit of a juggling act, so knowing who’s actually in the office could help a lot.
But yeah, I get the concern about privacy and the potential for some awkward moments. I think it’s gonna be important for companies to use this feature responsibly and to have open conversations about expectations. Maybe this will even push more workplaces to formally recognize the value of flexible working arrangements instead of needing the classic “sneak” day at home.
On the bright side, at least we’re not back in the days of buggy webcams and battling over the last working ethernet cable, right?
Scheduling meetings is easy. Don’t do it. Send an email.
“But what about when…” No. Email over meetings. You’re not special, your job isn’t special, your company isn’t special, your perceived needs aren’t special. Send an email. If that isn’t enough, send another email. If you get the urge to “give them a quick call”, firmly grasp your phone and hurtle it out the highest window or rooftop you have access to. Then send another email.
You sound like you’re really fun and easy to work with.
This reads like a LinkedIn comment honestly
Boy I hate MS, and I hate Outlook, and MS Teams, and offices, and companies, and work…
Yet, I’m failing to understand what I’m supposed to be angry about here, can someone help?
From what I understand, you set the work hours and people will know if you’re working or not based on that…? It doesn’t sound too controversial to me.
Do people stay home without telling anyone and they wont be able to do that anymore? Or what?
I am in the middle of trying to get e911 functional for Teams direct route calls, based of lis data, my Teams can’t correctly determine the state I am in, much less my current address. It took multiple tickets to get our corporate headquarters to show up correctly instead of an address a half-mile away.
I forsee getting a lot of tickets from this feature.
Shit, wtf? Don’t you set the location yourself? Why don’t they just ask your city or something instead of trying to play smart?
You can set it yourself but it then verifies your address is real using Bing maps and the database is really lacking. If it doesn’t find an entry it won’t let you enter it. I am told this will be moving to Azure maps soon which I hope is better.
Anyway we are leveraging manual network entries tofind phones at our locations using the WAP bssid or, for ethernet, LLDP but the latter isn’t working. I can show LLDP coming in on a pcap but Teams doesn’t see it - another ticket for Microsoft.
Outlook will soon know if you’re properly dressed for work while you’re WFH in case you’re not. They will detect pink pixels on your camera. They will detect gurgling noises, thuds, clapping noises, spitting, long wave vibrations such as fun chair bouncing and short wave vibrations such as clipping your hair sounds. The future is worthless! I mean endless!
So what if my boss knows when I’m fapping. Why else would they have scheduled an “all hands”?
I just need one for that.
Ain’t no “I” in team, brother.
All. Hands.
Look to the left of you. Now look to the right. Now grab both them dicks.
Edit: shit, I’m sitting between my dogs.
