Forum Discussion
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 Outlook 2016 client, as well as in both OWA and iOS Outlook clients, just missing from the Windows Outlook 2016 client. However, it seems to have stopped working, in all clients!
So, two things have occurred recently, which may have affected this functionality.
(1) A few days ago, I uninstalled and reinstalled the Office 2016 suite on my Macbook, and installed the latest version from our Office 2016 tenant (E3 corporate license). I only mention this because I saw someone else report a similar problem that started after installing or upgrading his Mac client.
(2) I enabled Modern Authentication in our Exchange Online tenant yesterday. I don't believe this to be the culprit because Focused Inbox is confirmed working for at least one of my co-workers, so the problem seems to be limited to my mailbox.
I've reviewed both the tenant and mailbox settings, and both show Focused Inbox as enabled. Where else can I check, or how else can I troubleshoot this issue? I'm really bummed because Clutter was so useful, and now everything is going to my inbox. I've been using "Move to Other" all day, but so far it's not getting the hint. :) Any ideas? Thanks!
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".
So, it's a week later and Focused Inbox is still enabled but not actually doing anything. No messages show up in the Other tab, in any of my clients, unless I move them manually. And I've been doing that a lot over the past week. The feature is working for my coworkers, so my mailbox seems to be the only one affected. At this point, I'm hoping that it somehow lost all the knowledge it accumulated during the Clutter training, and it's just re-learning my preferences, and one day it will just start working.
I'm in the Insider Fast ring, so I reported the problem through the Contact Support function within Outlook, but so far I've received no response from anyone at Microsoft.
Hello!
Activate your Focused inbox by:
1. Access the Exchange Online environment through the powershell.
2. Set-OrganizationConfig -FocusedInboxOn $ True (applies to entire organization)
3. Check if Get-OrganizationConfig is applied.
4. Go to Exchange Central Administration - Mail Flow - Rules and create a Focused inbox rule.
Set the message header to this value Add the following header value in the entry:
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-BypassFocusedInbox[Reference contents]
How to apply per user mailbox
Set-FocusedInbox -Identity true@TaeYoun.com -FocusedInboxOn $ True
How to Verify That User Mailbox Units Are Applied
Get-FocusedInbox -Identity true@TaeYoun.comhttp://taeyoun.com/220931790337
Thanks, but Focused Inbox is already enabled at both the organization level and on my mailbox. And I fail to see the need for a transport rule, since the purpose of that header is to allow certain messages to bypass the Focused Inbox processing, which is not the case here. Everything is going to my Focused tab, and nothing goes to the Other tab unless I move it there explicitly.
I have the latest Office 365 applications on my work PC, home PC and home laptop. My home PC shows ALL UNREAD and MENTIONS at the top of my inbox, it does not show FOCUSED or OTHER.
Have no idea how to fix this but the Outlook and Office versions are the same on all computers, just this one im on now has no FOCUSED inbox, and its not available in the view settings either...
Who knows.
