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Office 365 customers will be happy to learn that Microsoft is introducing a new tool that goes by the name of Clutter in order to keep their inbox clean and filtered from unimportant messages. The tool was previously known as Delve, but it is now appropriately named Clutter and it works on the principle of learning machines: the Clutter tool for Office 365 can be educated to distinguish between relevant messages and irrelevant ones, so that the user can work more efficiently without distractions.
A similar technology was employed by Google and its recently released Google Inbox. The Clutter tool for Office 365 learns tactics to show the user important contacts, conversations, information and documents and send the other ones to the Clutter folder. Of course, this learning takes time and it is based on user behavior. According to the recently released information on the Office official blog,
“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.”
If you worry that your “unimportant” messages will get deleted, don’t worry. If Clutter accidentally archives a message in the Clutter folder but you still want to read it, you can access it from the folder with no problems. Another important question is what happens to the usual spam messages that have their own designated destination? According to the developers, Clutter will likely filter all marketing messages, newsletters, commercials, magazines’ updates and news and all low – value content you may receive but don’t use to read.
The Clutter tool for Office 365 is based on Microsoft Office Graph, a system launched last year which uses algorithms to quantify social and business relationships and updates in your address book, so it can do a better job at filtering over time.
If you are an Office 365 user, you should also know that the Clutter tool won’t automatically start to work as of today. You have to turn on the feature (just sign a new check box in the Outlook Web Access menu to get things done) and give it a few days to learn your reading email habits. You can train the tool yourself by creating a Clutter category to filter inbox messages, so the tool learns faster what is important to you and what you consider as being irrelevant.
Considered a game – changing system, the Clutter tool for Office 365 is considered an important step in the quest of offering personalized experiences to customers and help them make their work more efficient.
