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cfiessinger's avatar
cfiessinger
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 17, 2016

New feature: Introducing a new file experience for groups in Outlook on the web

Today, we've announced a new file experience for groups in Outlook on the web. People frequently rely on email to edit and share documents with their teams, and this new experience makes it easier to collaborate on documents in Outlook on the web. This feature is available to all First Release tenants.
Please try it out and give us feedback.

  • Chad Johnston's avatar
    Chad Johnston
    Brass Contributor

    Positive feedback from my business user colleagues... I just left a typical Thursday morning business meeting that had nothing to do with this update and I overheard my colleague from our Marketing department giving a demo of this change to three other colleagues.  This impromptu demo quickly spread to all 15 attendees and consumed the first half of the meeting.  By the end of the impromptu demo, my colleagues were praising how helpful this will be and how much time this can save them during a typical work day.  They love that they can simply stay inside their inbox and complete quick tasks in their documents "in-the-moment" - one less thing to remember to do later.  They mentioned they would typically set aside emails requiring some sort of document activity and come back to it later.  

     

    This is one of those updates which resonates with the general business users because it removes that question of "what to use when".  It simply brings a common daily business task right in their inbox - the simple things matter.  Well done Microsoft and looking forward to what comes next.

     

    Next up for me - how to keep meetings on-topic!

     

    Chad Johnston

    • cfiessinger's avatar
      cfiessinger
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Thank you Chad for the positive feedback, glad to see your colleagues are finding value, more to come on that journey to make email and files collaboration awesome. Have a great day and thank all your colleagues on behalf of the team in Redmond that worked hard on this feature.
  • Dennis Gaida's avatar
    Dennis Gaida
    Iron Contributor

    Great integrative feature!

     

    Two gripes I have straight away:

    • "Activity" shows the last action for SharePoint files (e.g. modified/uploaded) but shows "E-Mail subject" for e-mailed files. Two different types of information in the same column. Also: I don't really care about the last activity, do I? I mean "Modified" doesn't even mean that the file was modified since the last time I saw it, so it is not really of use to me.
    • The Save to group library / Edit and reply are almost the same and produce weird results - bear with me:

     

    1. I e-mailed the file "TestFile.docx" to the group. The file shows up in Files. Awesome!
    2. I like my files at one place so I "Save to group library". Awesome!
    3. I now have two "TestFile.docx" under files. One from the mail, one in SharePoint. A non technical user doesn't know this as I only have Activity=Uploaded and Activity="Testfile" (my mail subject)
    4. Somebody else sees the initial file and open it.
    5. He clicks on "Edit and reply". Another version is created in SharePoint. I now have "TestFile1.docx"

    So I now have three TestFiles as seen in the screenshot attached to the post - a user wouldn't know what to do with this.

    • Dennis Gaida's avatar
      Dennis Gaida
      Iron Contributor

      A follow up:

      • I deleted both TestFiles from SharePoint (they're also removed from Files. Great!)
      • I now have two files in Files: TestFile.docx (from the initial mail) and TestFile(2).docx which is "Shared" according to the Activity. Also the date is 8 hours ago?!

      Something seems wrong here. As before, see attached screenshot.

    • cfiessinger's avatar
      cfiessinger
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Dennis thanks for the taking the time to test this out. At this stage this is by design: we do not remove the "classic" attachment in the first email and only keep a copy in SP and hence showing two rows each pointing to two different file. What you type of behavior would you like to see in the future?
      • Brent Ellis's avatar
        Brent Ellis
        Silver Contributor
        I'd like to see some kind of link (kinda like in outlook with focused inbox / unread etc) -- (1) Show all files (2) Show only email attachments (3) Show only SP files
  • My take on the new Files "experience" for Office 365 Groups. It's all very nice because attachments emailed to members in group conversations are now surfaced, perhaps in a vain attempt to persuade people to use cloudy attachments, but the downside is that extra clicks are required to access a document library. Which is bad. I'd like to see the option to retain the old behavior. https://www.petri.com/new-files-experience-office-365-groups

    • darrellaas's avatar
      darrellaas
      MVP

      Just one click away, the "Browse library" button will load the standard document library view. Email attachments are tucked away in a folder with the same name. Would it help to have the reverse? Start with the standard doc library view, and have the Activity view with the other views under the All Documents button?

      • TonyRedmond's avatar
        TonyRedmond
        MVP

        As I have said elsewhere, it takes more than one click if you have a document library with folders and need to get to one of the folders. In the old setup, you clicked Files and were brought to the folder that you were last working in. Now it takes three.

         

        But the more important point is that Microsoft should not introduce change of this nature without giving users the option to retain the previous arrangement. After all, some people have been working with Files using "the old way" for 2 years... and it's not right to force a new method down our throats without a by-your-leave. Hence the requirement to provide users with the option to access Files using the classic method.

  • Luke Hoffman's avatar
    Luke Hoffman
    Iron Contributor

    How come you can't create a new OneNote file from the Files area? 

     

    I do think it's confusing to have Files and Site.  Makes it seem like documents are in mulitple locations even if they aren't.  Overall I'm really struggling with group navigation.  In and out of Outlook is confusing in my opionion.  I keep expecting the same top navigation no matter where I am and it's different depending on if I'm in sites or Outlook.  I really think getting the top nav to be consistent would be a real win.   

  • Brent Ellis's avatar
    Brent Ellis
    Silver Contributor
    Will the "edit permissions" option be made available from this interface? I don't seem to see those anywhere. Or will you just have to go to the Shared Documents library via SharePoint to access those options?
  • Great effort and it looks great. One nice add-in would be allow sorting of columns. Guess it is currently sorted by date and would be nice if sorting of other columns is allowed as in doc library.

  • cfiessinger

    Speaking of bugs, after the rollout of this new feature, I now see two versions of the same file: one is the latest and the other is a previous one!

    • cfiessinger's avatar
      cfiessinger
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Salvatore, can you please navigate to SharePoint and look in the "Email Attachment" folder and see if you have your file there? When you select "Edit & Reply" we store a copy in that folder as explains in this article: http://aka.ms/groupfiles
      • Salvatore Biscari's avatar
        Salvatore Biscari
        Silver Contributor

        The duplicate file in the group visualization is "Documento prova gruppo.docx", which is marked as "Modificato" in two different dates. It is not an attachment. In SharePoint instead it is (correctly present) only once.

        Definitely a bug in the new visualization, IMHO.

  • Austin Healy's avatar
    Austin Healy
    Copper Contributor
    So with this upgrade it looks like it has removed the ability to stop inherit rights on a folder and then to remove any of the default groups (Share Members & Share Visitors)? This was a nice feature as we used it to replace network drives on local servers. Occasionally we would have a folder in the group that we needed to make private by removing the members and visitors and then just added the few users that needed access.
  • Shweta Hegde's avatar
    Shweta Hegde
    Copper Contributor

    Hello,

     

    I am unable to see "Edit and reply" option if i go to "Files" tab. I am trying this from Web interface. Am i missing something?

     

    Thanks

     

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