Forum Discussion
MicrosoftWhat do you think about RSVP in Outlook?
RSVP and unticking “Email organiser” are on my every-growing list of favourite, intuitive features. I still believe it needs to be made clearer under which circumstances the tracking information is not updated, as I feel this can lead to confusions, similar to the “Do Not Send a Response” in Classic Outlook.
MicrosoftHi Karen_Roem
"unticking email organiser"
You seem like one of those users that rely a lot on silent responses, because you have empathy for the organizer and do not want to load them with tons of potentially unnecessary response emails in the Inbox; am I right? Most of the time, there is no need to add an RSVP note, but when they are added, it is very important that they become clearly visible to the meeting organizer. One of the improvements we are looking into is to give organizers more power over what they see or not in their Inbox, which would mean transferring this "burden" from the responding attendee to the organizer; instead of attendees having to worry about "if there will be a visible email arriving at the organizer's inbox", we could give the organizer a setting or filter to choose if/when they want to see/hide the RSVP emails in their inbox.
"I still believe it needs to be made clearer under which circumstances the tracking information is not updated"
Ideally, the tracking information should always be updated. RSVP ("répondez s'il vous plaît") is by definition a means of communication through which the invitee lets the organizer know if they will be attending or not; thus if someone responds, the organizer must be able to see/access the response somehow, otherwise the core goal of RSVPing is not fulfilled. The most important reason why we are looking into changes in the "email organizer" flow/design and into "silent responses" is exactly to improve "tracking". We want tracking to be available and reliable for all meeting sizes (including large events with tens of thousands of attendees) and across all scenario combinations (cross-client, cross-tenant, cross-platform). Saving one's response locally without letting the organizer know is not RSVPing per se; if this user need exists, it can be fulfilled via other means, not necessarily the RSVP flow. And tailoring the impact of RSVPs (e.g. email; notification; silently update tracking table...) on the organizer's experience should be under the organizer's control, as they are the most interested party.
Thank you for sharing your feedback, Karen. Always good to hear your thoughts!
Introducing the Classic Outlook check box (File > Options > Mail) to select the Update tracking information, and then delete responses that don't contain comments would no doubt be much appreciated; thanks, Gio. And yeah, ideally, the tracking information should always be updated, but if it doesn’t I feel we need to manage expectations and make it clear when it doesn’t work.
