Improved Mail app experience in Windows 8.1

As  you know Windows 8.1 is recently released and with it comes more than 20 new and improved Microsoft apps and services. The email experience begins with the much improved Mail app. The new Mail app is also optimized for mobile devices, built for great touch experience.The New Mail app is designed for modern email with features like Sweep which is coming to Mail app for people using Outlook.com mail account. And Outlook.com users will also see features like newsletters and Social updates getting automatically organised into special views and many other cool features.

Group Program Manager for the Windows Communication Apps, Kipling Knox has devoted a blog post to the new Mail App in the Windows 8.1 and says it is the best email experience on any tablet.

After receiving lots of customer feedback it was recognized that today people use email in many different ways then they had used in the past. So it was ensured that the new Mail app takes advantage of the Outlook.com service. The new Mail app is also optimized for a modern efficient email experience on mobile devices, built for touch and designed for the types of mail that matters most to you.

With trends emerging such as –

• 68% access their Outlook.com account on mobile devices
• More people access Outlook.com on a mobile device than on web
• Outlook.com mobile usage tripled in the last year

So it was critical for Mail to work beautifully on tablets along with other devices and thus came a wide range of improvements across the Mail app in Windows 8.1 -

• Checkboxes in the message list to easily select one or more messages
• Drag & drop messages into folders
• App bar now has visible preview making it easier for both mouse or touch
• App bar organized more logically
• Searching mail on server, syncing mail across all folders are more quick & reliable
• Improved performance not at the expense of battery life and network bandwidth
• Ensuring great experience be it touch or keyboard and mouse, UI adapted for both.
• Hover commands on message list
• Can open mail in a new window, so you can view / edit mails side by side

• Optimized for using both work and personal mail accounts without having to switch apps or going to web
• advanced multi-account feature like ability to change return address
• support for advanced IT policies like authenticated proxies, special certificates
• full implementation of EAS protocol thus meeting requirements of company’s network
• Automatically organize inbox sorting out message by type like newsletters , social updates
• to create customized views , added a new toolbar to mail on left side affectionately called Power pane 

People view - When you set up a new account, the Mail app analyzes your Inbox and identifies people with whom you communicate frequently and so marked these as favorites in the people view.

“The People view adapts over time, based on your email habits (though once you mark someone as a favorite, that label sticks until you change it). So you might not see a lot of people in this view at first, but over time, it will fill out to capture your most important communications.”

Click on a person, and you see all the email you’ve exchanged with them, across your folders. If you click the People icon, you’ll see all the email from all your favorites. This is a helpful way to track email just from people who you’ve marked as important—and filter out email from everyone else.The People view adapts over time, based on your email habits (though once you mark someone as a favorite, that label sticks until you change it). So you might not see a lot of people in this view at first, but over time, it will fill out to capture your most important communications.

Mail app enables you to mark folders as favorites, too. Just open the folder menu and click the stars for the folders you want to place on the power pane.

And if you are a Outlook.com user, the mail experience gets even better -

• Newsletters and social updates are automatically recognized and organized into a special view below your inbox. If you don’t want certain mail categorized, just drag it to inbox.
• The Mail app provides the Sweep feature built right into it.

• Can set up automatic replies in case of you are going on vacation and not able to respond to messages
• As Outlook.com uses Exchange ActiveSync, your Outlook.com contacts and calendar are also automatically synced with your Windows 8.1 device.

So these are some of the cool features in the new Mail app in Windows 8.1 . I’m sure more feature addition will happen as its users provides feedback.