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As I participate more and more in different distribution lists at Microsoft, I'm starting to here more and more poeple complain about BCC emails. Honestly, I've always wondered what the purpose of BCC was if not to send an email to yourself when you send one to someone else. Honestly, that's probably the only use I've gotten out of it for the past 8 years or so. Then, I noticed people replying to email that pertains to one distribution list and not another by BCC'ing the one it doesn't apply to, noting that it was BCC'ed. The purpose here, as I've come to understand, is that unrelated email is moved to a different, more appropriate thread and anyone who's interested will know where to go find it. The problem with this is that, when you BCC someone, you break email rules that people have setup. While I completely understand this, BCC is not the norm, so I just accept it. Besides, email rules are never 100%, anyway -- at least not for me. I can see both sides of the coin, so it's definitely not cut-and-dry. To get around this, people suggest you send 2 emails: one explaining that you're moving the conversation to another location and another to that other location with all pertinent parties CC'ed. I like that this abides by rules, but this is just too much effort. Plus, I like seeing what the comment is that is sending someone away from my distribution list when it is transferred elsewhere. This, of course, is what led me to my suggestion: add the capability to fork or branch an email into two (or more) emails. In its simplest form, you would identify one or more people that you want to be broken off of the re-all list and send your email to everyone as you currently do. Then, Outlook (or perhaps the mail server) would send out multiple messages to the only the parties you specified. This would allow you to send one email to everyone who was being removed from the list and another to those who are staying on it. The only problem I see is that the logic and selection process to choose who is and isn't to remain on the list could be a pain. Nothing horribly difficult, but you'd definitely want to make sure it has a nice user experience.
All too often I get an email talking about a meeting or event of some sort that I want to add to my calendar. From the inbox, I can drag the email to the calendar icon on the left. Now, if I could just do something similar from an open email. In Outlook 2007, there's an Other Actions menu item on the Message ribbon that would be perfect for this.
I was looking at a few contacts and wanted to find email I sent to them. I then thought about a feature in Gmail that listed all email with a given contact. This would be a perfect view off the contact's dialog. I want to be able to see any and all collaboration points with the contact, so show me email, appointments, and tasks. Hell, I'd even like to see how each contact is related to other contacts. Contact relationships might be a bit harder to visualize, but I can think of a few ideas that should work fairly well.
Outlook is great, but there's one thing I'd really like to see in a future release: tagging support. Right now they have categories, which is ok, but not really what I want. The thing I don't like about categories is the fact that they show up for everything. For instance, I have about half a dozen categories for grouping contacts. When I'm looking at my calendar, I don't want to see those, but they show up. This could somewhat be resolved by adding tagging support to contacts, messages, appointments, and tasks. I still like categories, but tags would be nice.
The Outlook Upcoming Appointments Vista sidebar gadget  shows a list of 3 or 5 appointments. This is basically the same view Outlook 2007 gives you on the To-Do Bar, which is on the right side of the default Outlook view. When I look at these lists, I always pause to check what day the appointments are for. Granted, there is text in the appointment block that says the day, but I'd like something that's outside of the appointment that groups them together. The reason I'd like it outside of the appointment info block is because it would make it easier to see what appointments are on what days. One of the first things you learn when it comes to formulating user interfaces is that white space is good. Too much info in a small area takes longer to consume. Adding a small break between appointments with the name of the day would be very simple and I think would make it easier to scan thru this information. Of course, my this applies to both the gadget and Outlook client view.
The new Outlook Vista sidebar gadgets for appointments and tasks are nice, but they're very basic. The main problem I have with both gadgets is the font size. Not that it's huge, but I want it smaller so I can see more items. There is an option to have a "normal" or large view on both, which is nice. Just looking at it, I'd say they're about 1.5x and 2x the size of the Calendar gadget.
Here's a different resolution to a problem I've mentioned before: unsolicited email. The typical scenario is that an email goes out to a large group of people and then everyone starts making comments, sometimes completely off the subject. Either way, you may not even care about them. Working in large organizations, the problem can me multiplied because you end up getting on distribution lists that you don't care about at all, but are purely there for political reasons. No matter why you received the email, you don't want to participate in the useless email conversation that seems to be never-ending. If only we could unsubscribe to an email conversation. Basically, it'd be like specifying a conversation as junk email, except there'd have to be some limitations to ensure a separate conversation wouldn't get accidentally marked as junk.
I like my taskbar to have as few items as possible. Honestly, I like my notification tray to be minimal, too, but that seems to be getting worse and worse. With that in mind, I have to say I like apps that make judiscious use of both of these areas. Outlook doesn't really do a good job of that. At times, there will be 3 items -- the main taskbar item and 2 notification icons. I'd like to see the ability to minimize Outlook to the notification tray. I tend to have a lot of different apps open, so if I can minimize what's on my taskbar, I'm happy.
Released in Outlook 2003
Here's one that should affect everyone who's had to work around email. In probably every company that relies on email, you'll see email sent out to the masses -- whether it's 5 or 500,000 people isn't the issue. Every once in a while, you'll get someone who decides to Reply All and say something that you will most likely not care about. Then, in what seems to be a snowball effect, others start doing the same. Then, you start getting the people who are just as annoyed with the junk email as you are and Reply All with a message of "Unsubscribe" or something similar to mark their disinterest and others' disrespect of their email inbox. The problem just gets worse from there. I think I speak for everyone when I say that there has got to be a work-around to this... besides weeding out the idiots.
One other scenario where I think the Reply All comes into play, but not necessarily as drastic of an annoyance, is when you BCC someone. As I'm sure you know, when you BCC someone on an email, those who receive the email don't know you sent it to the BCC'er(s), yet they still have the ability to Reply All. This can raise tensions, depending on the context. So, obviously, limiting the Reply All feature here would also be a good thing.
Basically, I'm thinking that Outlook needs an option to specify when the Reply All feature is available. This option alone could save a lot of pain. Obviously, someone can still do a manual Reply All, but that would help ensure that the user truly wants to reply to everyone, instead of not realizing who they're sending the reply to (namely, senior execs who you're not on a first name, fart joke basis with). I'd hate for there to be a dialog box that asks if a user is sure they want to Reply All, because I know a lot of people hate dialog boxes. But something does need to change.
The BCC scenario actually has 2 parts, in my mind. First and foremost, the receiver needs to know that they have been BCC'ed. If they don't know, then they are more likely to Reply All. Obviously, the second part is the actual Reply All. Perhaps a Fwd to All option might be used in the BCC scenario to signify that this person is a masked part of the conversation; however, that could still cause the same issues. My hopes for that would be that seeing the different text on the button would make the user realize what they're doing.
Honestly, tho, I think that any effort made to hide the capability would eventually come down to the user getting an option whether or not they want to Reply All or at least whether to respect the sender's choice to show/hide the feature. This is somewhat like the option to be notified when someone reads your email. I believe this was automatic in Outlook 2000; however, in Outlook 2002, the user received an option as to whether to send that notification back or not. Personally, I like that. I'm assuming any attempt to limit Reply All would come down to the same decision. Even so, at least that's something!
Edit: Outstanding news... this is already in Outlook 2007. The feature may be in earlier versions, but I'm not sure. In Outlook 2007, when you're creating a new message, click the Office button (Alt+F) and, under Permission submenu, check the Do Not Reply All option. It's a beautiful thing.
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