It seems like everyone’s getting on the inbox filtering bandwagon. Today, Microsoft announced a new feature for Outlook called Clutter that’s designed to help users get a handle on all the emails they receive in a given day.
The service, which is only available to Office 365 Business subscribers at the moment, is designed to take in knowledge about a user’s daily activities and translate that into productivity by filtering lower-priority emails into a Clutter folder. Here’s a video that shows how it works:
Clutter uses machine learning to identify which messages to move, which makes it more intelligent over time. Those moves are based on a user’s past behavior, as well as the message content, a user’s work relationships, and even how a user is addressed in a particular message.
Users of Office 365 for Business will see Clutter roll out in the coming weeks. It’s disabled by default, but people can turn it on in the Office Web App options menu.
It’s another move to help people effectively handle their emails by sorting them into particular buckets. Google does a similar thing both through the Gmail website as well as its new Inbox app, and there are a handful of third-party services like SaneBox that provide those services as well.