Microsoft has released preview/beta test versions of a standalone ‘Outlook’ app for Apple and Android devices.
The apps aim to give one unified place to view email, calendar, contacts, and attachments from cloud based email storage. Anything with Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) or IMAP is compatible Exchange (either from Microsoft’s Office 365 or elsewhere), Outlook.com, Google, iCloud or Yahoo:
In addition there’s links to both OneDrive and Dropbox file storage.
The apps are based on Accompli which was bought by Microsoft so this isn’t a true ‘version 1.0’ release. That said, we’ve had the devil’s own time getting the new app to work with a standard Exchange Server box (AutoDiscovery doesn’t work) so we’ll reserve judgment on the app.
You can get the preview apps for iOS or Android.
The Outlook apps have left/right swiping options that let you quickly sort through your email.
Both the above images courtesy of Microsoft.
Both Apple and Android have email, calendar and contacts connections to Exchange Server already (we’ve been using them for years). These new Outlook apps will need to work with existing OS and apps as well as provide genuine advantages over the in-built options.
As always, we’d love to hear comments or questions on the apps here.
