Forum Discussion
cfiessinger
Microsoft
MicrosoftNew 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...
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:
- I e-mailed the file "TestFile.docx" to the group. The file shows up in Files. Awesome!
- I like my files at one place so I "Save to group library". Awesome!
- 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)
- Somebody else sees the initial file and open it.
- 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.
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.
- cfiessingerDennis 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?
- 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
cfiessinger, you asked so you'll get more feedback.
The new file experience is great in principle. A unified view is exactly what is needed to un-confuse users where files actually are. It makes things quicker to access and uncomplicates things. I see the following problems in the current implementation:
- Reinventing the wheel in terms of unification
- Microsoft Teams has a unified file experience across all teams and OneDrive
- Reinventing the wheel in terms of user experience
- Again Microsoft Teams has a unique file experience
- OneDrive & SharePoint just got a UI overhaul including re-usable components (looking at you SharePoint Framework & Office UI Fabric), yet the groups file experience seem to be yet another implementation of "files in a list"
- The unification is not consistent as outlined by me and others in this thread
I would advise improving the current implementation like so:
- Create one true file experience. Office UI Fabric should lead the way. Use that experience in Teams as well as in Groups. Don't let everybody see that you work in different product groups and there is no communication between those product groups. Users will thank you by understanding "ahhh this is the way Microsoft wants me to work with files" and not having to relearn everything for every application
- If you want to aggregate files from different sources into one view, there must be one master ("the one to rule them all")
- Imagine this flow:
- A file comes into the group via e-mail --> It's the master file, not editable.
- I move the file into the connected Team site --> (thinking in OneDrive/SharePoint) the master file gets updadated to link to SharePoint/OneDrive in the version history you can see the file came from an e-mail
- I go back to the initial mail and open the file from there and edit it --> I am not editing yet another copy from E-Mail attachments, I am editing the master file created earlier!
- If the user wants to create a copy of the file via SharePoint - fine, let him do this. This is now another master file. You shouldn't create copies besides the initial "working copy"
- The activity column is still valid, but should be renamed "Last activity" to know what happened with the file last. "Activity" implies that this is currently going on or I could click on this activity and do something with it.
- Imagine this flow:
So basically my two gripes are about the UI being yet-anther-file-UI and the experience making managing files actually more confusing for the end user.
- Use an existing file UI and/or implement that UI everywhere (Groups, Teams, OneDrive/SharePoint).
- Re-Think the aggregation/unification of multiple sources and use existing concepts like file versions and have one master file.
- cfiessingerThanks Dennis for taking the time to give use feedback. I like your idea of saving ALL attachments to SharePoint and that's the key challenge we are trying to tackle, over 90% of files shared via email today are send as attachments (vs. shared from SPO or ODfB) that's why just providing a SP lens does not suffice since lots of files are not in the Groups document library to start with. We are learning a ton since First Release and iterating fast to improve the experience so please stay tune.
- Reinventing the wheel in terms of unification
