The new Clutter feature by Microsoft is created to boost productivity by allowing users to give more attention to the most relevant among their email messages. Powered by Office Graph, Clutter is now available to business users of Office 365.
Clutter learns in an intuitive way to know which messages should be prioritized and which ones can be a opened at a more convenient time. These lower-priority messages are automatically taken out of the way, eliminating the need to sort through a long list of emails received. They are smartly placed in the new Clutter folder, which makes one's inbox free from distractions.
"Clutter removes distractions so you can focus on what matters most," said Microsoft in a blog post.
Clutter studies the user's prior actions with certain messages and how they are addressed by a particular message. If the user has never opened emails from a particular person or company before, Clutter will eventually understand it.
"It gets smarter over time, learning from your prior actions with similar messages, and assessing things like the type of content and even how you are addressed in the message," said Microsoft.
In essence, Clutter functions just like a spam filter. Users can drag messages to a same-named folder as a way to train the feature when spotting similar email messages in the future.
"If you find items in your Clutter folder that shouldn't be there, train Clutter by moving the message back to your inbox," said Microsoft.
The messages that are designated into the Clutter folder can be viewed at any time. These identified messages will never appear in one's inbox.
The experience with Clutter is personalized to each user. This means that all of the information that the feature learns about the individual is not shared with anyone.
"The information Clutter learns from each user's actions are only applied to that user's experience and are not shared with anyone else," said Microsoft.
Users who want to take advantage of the Clutter feature in their inbox would have to access it through the Outlook Web App options menu. If the user finds that Clutter is not a suitable feature, he can easily turn it off at any time.
Clutter is now rolled out to Office 365's business users. Those who are participating in the company's First Release program shall be the first batch to receive the feature. Other business users will get the update before the month ends.
