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

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

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.

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

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.   

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!

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