Microsoft experimenting with a pause button for incoming e-mail

Microsoft Office Labs has launched a new product called E-mail Prioritizer that will not only sort through your in-box to figure out what's important, but also give you an honest-to-goodness pause button in case you want to escape an Exchange server e-mail avalanche.

Users must be running the latest version of Outlook (2007), and for now the tool is PC-only. After installing it, you'll get a new toolbar menu option that lets you toggle on the "do not disturb" mode for a certain period of time or based on your meeting schedule. Once you return, or the timer runs out, it'll sync back up and grab new messages.

Unfortunately this is a client-side stop-gap on the way to having such an option on the Exchange server itself. Sure your server admin can put a pause on your account, but you can't. This option simply turns off Outlook's software-based e-mail antenna, so messages will still dutifully arrive on your mobile phone if you've got it set up to receive push mail.

To toggle the 'away' mode you can just use the drop down menu. This menu also lets you sort through prioritized e-mails.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The far more interesting half of this tool is the prioritizer itself. This will rate messages in your in box from zero to three stars. The ratings come from a system used by many folks, including several Microsoft employees I talked to back in March. For instance, e-mails sent to you and nobody else, or those from your bosses gets three stars, whereas mail you're carbon-copied on, or where you're part of a large list, scores far lower.

In my case, my in-box had about 450 messages on it, and it was prioritized in about a minute's time. To make use of it, you must learn from and train Microsoft's system, which could become second nature after a week or two of honing your in-box skills.

Microsoft's priority system is not easy to understand at first, but based on a system of rules you can simply go in and edit.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

[bartszyszka]

Shouldn't it be called a "procrastinate button"? If you pause it now and it doesn't actually disable your email for that period of time, it's just delaying when the avalanche will come in...

[Riquez-001]

This is a pretty bad idea, in effect its simulating what would happen if you had a bad email server that was slow to deliver email.
Say an important email from your boss comes in that needs dealing with right away, you dont get it for another 2 hours, perhaps you already went home by then.
Asking for trouble.

Setting up rules to filter mail into folders is already a much better solution - you can see you have 57 customer emails to deal with later & you dont miss out the important things.

[ballmerisanape]

perhaps microsoft should patch all the XP SP1 and below spam mail zombies that are sending the majority of the worlds spam email.. that might cut back on the crap a little.... I know designing an OS with consumers and the internet in mind was a low priority for Microsoft.. but.. .. awww.. nevermind...

[lukepuplett]

Having virtual credits and charging per recipient is my preferred method. The problem is with office culture and the ease in which we can increase the audience of our 'productivity' by emailing lots of people all day long (and sometimes as late in the working day as we can).

We need to be motivated to pinpoint the precise people that benefit from our communications, and not lazily scattershot a load of tenuous stakeholders. I need to be forced to go to my boss to explain why I spent all my credits.

[t26l]

sounds innovative

[t26l]

Wow, smart idea from Microsoft!

e-mail distraction is a real serious problem and this might be a good solution. Also detailed proritisation seems like godsent for people with overflowing mailboxes.

[sadchild]

gay

[devahaz]

My view is that email prioritization is important, but only one of many elements required to really help people deal with their email overload problems. Just wrote a blog post comparing this to our ClearContext Personal product here: http://blog.clearcontext.com/2008/08/microsoft-offic.html

[haggie2]

Huh? I thought there was a "pause" button built into all my Microsoft applications. If there isn't, why do they run so slow?