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How long does it take for Focused Inbox to become activated?

Iron Contributor

I've been waiting for Focused Inbox for a long time (really liked it on mobile) but have some how been out of the loop. I kept waiting for it to just come to Outlook (I'm on the insider fast ring) but never did. I looked it up today and apparently you have to actually manually enable it! I try to keep up on this stuff but this just slipped by me.

 

At this point I've enabled it for my mailbox only and I have it turned off at the organization level. From what I read, if I'm not mistaken, the newest of those two settings takes precedence. In my case, I turned it off at the org first (the setting was empty) and then enabled it on my mailbox.

 

I've closed and reopened Outlook a few times but still no Focused Inbox.

 

Does it take time to provision in the tenant or something? Will I be notified in Outlook that it's ready and a restart is needed?

3 Replies

Here I am four hours later and still no dice. I opened a ticket with MS and the rep is saying that I must turn it on at the organization level (mine is $false) as well as the mailbox. I don't think this is correct for two reasons. According to https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-Focused-Inbox-Admin-Help-613a845c-4b71-41de-b331-acd... it says:

 

  1. By default the org setting and mailbox setting values are null and this means they are enabled.
  2. The timestamp of the two settings is also important in that the newest one is chosen as the true value: "Outlook decides to show the experience by choosing which cmdlet has the latest time stamp."

Here's what I've got:

 

13_53_05-adminwk-002 - Remote Desktop Connection Manager v2.7.png

 

 

To be clear on what's happening, I don't see the option to turn Focused Inbox on in either Outlook or Outlook on the web. I know they both must be turned on by the user for them to work. I don't even have that option.

best response confirmed by VI_Migration (Silver Contributor)
Solution

Unless someone can correct me, the Focused Inbox hasn't come to Outlook 2016 yet, we are still waiting to hear which version has it. 

 

The Focused Inbox rollout still seems to be very much in flux and we haven't had an update on its progress since January I think.  It's coming to Outlook on the web & Mac, for First Release by next month and Standard users 6-8 weeks after that.  Outlook 2016 for Windows is TBD.

 

This thread makes rather dim reading - Focused Inbox vs Clutter (more junk in my primary inbox)

Oh wow... The messaging on this feature is sooo disjointed. I mean they have actual live documentation out there that shows you how to enable the gull dern thing in Outlook 2016.

 

For the time being I'll give up on it. I guess this explains my earlier confusion over why I thought I'd missed an announcement or something.

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by VI_Migration (Silver Contributor)
Solution

Unless someone can correct me, the Focused Inbox hasn't come to Outlook 2016 yet, we are still waiting to hear which version has it. 

 

The Focused Inbox rollout still seems to be very much in flux and we haven't had an update on its progress since January I think.  It's coming to Outlook on the web & Mac, for First Release by next month and Standard users 6-8 weeks after that.  Outlook 2016 for Windows is TBD.

 

This thread makes rather dim reading - Focused Inbox vs Clutter (more junk in my primary inbox)

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