Sunday Musing on Microsoft Outlook

Many of us are familiar with this tool called "Microsoft Outlook". if you are not - do not read any further as you will not understand the situations and the fun embedded in our day to day life, working with this tool for supposedly "communicating" with all our teams and the whole outside world.

Since you are reading this, I am assuming you are not someone from outside this planet earth! One thing that Microsoft has done to "productivity" is to unite the world together with a tool that everyone can relate to (OK, not all, few of them happen to use other tools as well)! Considering the amount of time we spend on this tool and use/abuse it day in and day out, I thought of sharing feedback to the product group and folks marketing the product in Microsoft.

Here is my wish-list of features that should be included in the Outlook application for end user. I will leave the reason behind each of these feedback to the vivid imagination of the users. :) With Office 365 on cloud and the telemetry data that Microsoft may have, it is a cakewalk to implement this (hello Office 365 team, this is for you). For the readers, if you can't relate to this, you can simply search for any "exodus" planned to some other planetary system in near future - and do not come back to me for explanation as i have already bought that ticket and am busy with packing my stuff.

1. Pay per email - the misuse of email over the years as an alternate means of communication (even to a person sitting 10 m away from you) has reached monumental proportions, not to mention criminal misuse. My simple solution is to have a price added to each email sent out (a few off cents will do) and increase it in stepped-slabs for every additional 20 words added to it.
2. Loose more if you CC more - Company variable pay should have a component called "CC Cess". This should be computed based on the number of folks cc'ed in the emails. the CC-Mania has reached such a proportion that people have started missing email of importance buried in this CC-Heap. I actual color code emails where I am in CC (its a rule set in Outlook btw to do that) and skip reading them for days! Back to the suggestion, managers should be provided access to a "CC-Requisition" system whereby they can request their sub-ordinates to copy them on emails ranging from useless to most useless (did i miss word useful, oh!! are there any?). However, this would mean that manager would have to pay (and not the sender) for each of these emails! Voila - one stone, 2 birds....exterminated!
3. Single Sender Surcharge - The sender should be penalized by doubling the cost of the email (read point 1, if you missed that), if its sent to one person only. I thought emails were for ensuring communications with multiple folks of relevance and who can contribute and collaborate with the beautiful piece of writing you have just penned :)
4. Dead end at five "to and fro" - any thread with same subject line and exceeding 5 emails shall be "terminated automatically" and deleted from everyone's mailbox. A meeting invite will be sent (here comes the practical application of AI) to all folks taking care of their time zones, time when they go to gym, time when they have bio-breaks, time when they are simply not willing to come on a call, time when they are really blocked for some work (did i get the priority order in reverse)
5. Time Zones warning for off-business hours emails - France did that with legal backing and I liked it. Its important that with global teams, when a person composes an email, he gets current time and date at each of the locations of recipients as a header of email. An emoji of a person dreaming or binge watching or whatever one can do in off-hours be added to make it clear, right in the face of the sender. At time of sending, the system should prompt and say "Did you forget to apologize to the sender about the unearthly timing, there is no urgency to this and that the person can respond in his time zone?" If sender does not do that, don't allow the email to be sent out!

Great since you have reached this far, thanks for the same. You really survived reading the "Weekend ramblings of a creative mind" (that's the book i am writing and will be published in few months, maybe 120 or 180). Anything i missed, please let me know!

Microsoft folks, is there some royalty i can receive on such suggestions once they are incorporated in the app? I am available here and waiting for the same :)

PS: Writing anything today needs a disclaimer, so here goes.

DISCLAIMER - The entire piece above is a figment of imagination penned on a Sunday evening under influence of possibly some hydrocarbons aged over years (is HOH considered in this category) - with a new week looking ahead in my face and memories from past week making me laugh over this thought. Any resemblance to your life situations at work or in life, is not coincidental and definitely intentional. Enjoy and take it in the right vein (not on right, but one which is not wrong)!! Happy Week Ahead...