Focused Inbox not working
Finally got Focused Inbox to appear in my Windows Outlook 2016 client yesterday, after finally enabling Modern Authentication in our Exchange Online tenant. It had been present and working in my Mac ...
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Update: So far, working with Microsoft support has not produced a reason for the behavior described above. However, they directed me to start flagging every non-importnt message with "Always Move to Other", and it seems to be slowly working - some new messages are starting to appear in the Other tab, but only the ones I've already previously flagged. It doesn't seem to be very intelligent, at least not yet. I'm disappointed that it seems to have lost all of the knowledge it acquired during the Clutter phase and the previous Focused Inbox phase. I have suggested to Support that the client needs to have a button or setting to force the mailbox to clear all Focused Inbox "rules" (or whatever it is that keeps track of what I like and don't like), sort of a "reset learning" flag, because I still think there's something in my mailbox that is confusing the learning engine and causing this behavior. The case is still open with Support, so if they (or I) come up with anything else that's useful, I will share it here.
Update: On Friday, Microsoft had me disable all of my inbox rules, just to make sure that none of those were interfering with Focused Inbox processing. They're also suspicious of our Ironport appliances and how they may be altering incoming mail, but that doesn't really make sense to me, since Focused Inbox is working normally for a co-worker and his mail goes through the same appliance. It will modify the Subject line to flag certain messages as "Marketing" or "Potential Spam", but it's been doing that all along, including back when Focused Inbox processing was working properly for me. The latest word is that I sent them a few sample emails that went to the Focused tab but should have gone to the Other tab, and I'm waiting for their feedback. As of this morning, I'd say it's half-working. Of the two dozen emails I've received that are not important (spam or bulk emails that got past the Ironport's filters), about half have gone to the Other tab and the rest showed up in the Focused tab. I even went so far as to clear out my safe senders and safe recipients lists (did that on Monday, actually).
In my opinion (which I may have mentioned before) the Focused Inbox "learning" process needs to have a reset switch that clears out everything and let's it start learning from scratch again. I don't want to have to do this sort of troubleshooting for any of our end users. I was very impressed with how well Clutter worked, but my transition to Focused Inbox has not been a pleasant experience. And I really miss my inbox rules, many of which moved messages into custom folders and kept my inbox pretty clean. I guess that's the price of being an early adopter.
I solved my problem this way.
Logged into the webmail interface for Outlook(Office 365).
Navigate to options>Mail>Layout>Focused Inbox.
For some unknown reason my radio button had been set to "Don't Sort Messages". I flipped it back to "Sort Messages into Focused and Other".I have the same problem, everything was working without issue ever since focused Inbox was introduced, then one or two days ago it just stopped working. everything in options is set to sort by focused inbox, Outlook has forgotten or stopped understanding what a focused/ other email is. I have tried all that I can from a user point of view as I am not an admin on our exchange.
Any Other ideas or help?
Thank you for your feedback on the progress.
I will refer you.Mike - wondering if the 'training messages' method is working over time. I used Clutter for a few years and Focused Inbox worked flawlessly for me the first month or so of release. As of last week, it just stopped working, all messages go to Inbox as you've noted. I have covered all settings/suggestions and nothing. What I find odd, Focused Inbox has been part of the iOS Outlook app for a long time and it always worked with zero training required. I have colleagues who are not experiencing my issues at all. Makes no sense.
Hello David,
Messages go into the Other tab automatically, yes, but it's more of a filter for marketing messages and spam. No false positives, so that's a plus. I still get quite a bit in Focused, so it's a regular routine to move them to Other or report them as Junk. I still feel that it worked better before it stopped working suddenly, but I can't back that up with any proof.
As the Exchange admin, I really hope this doesn't happen to any of my users. Telling them that their only option is to retrain the filter is a lousy solution.
Mike
