Sneaking in a work from home day could soon be a bit trickier thanks to a new update coming to Microsoft Outlook.
The email provider is rolling out a new feature that will allow users to spot which of their co-workers or colleagues is currently in the office, and therefore possibly free for a quick meeting or able to reply to a message.
The update will use the Work Hours and Location information stored within Outlook to offer up this information, meaning there may be some awkward conversations if your colleagues believe you to be in the office.
In its entry in the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the company notes that the feature will be “always on”, meaning there may be no getting around what it represents as your office presence.
Outlook will soon know if you’re properly dressed for work while you’re WFH in case you’re not. They will detect pink pixels on your camera. They will detect gurgling noises, thuds, clapping noises, spitting, long wave vibrations such as fun chair bouncing and short wave vibrations such as clipping your hair sounds. The future is worthless! I mean endless!
It’s already started for me today. Teams now snitches on those who are remote and there’s no way to shut it off. My status is no longer just “Available”, it’s now “Available, Out of office”. Fuck Microsoft!
Boy I hate MS, and I hate Outlook, and MS Teams, and offices, and companies, and work…
Yet, I’m failing to understand what I’m supposed to be angry about here, can someone help?
From what I understand, you set the work hours and people will know if you’re working or not based on that…? It doesn’t sound too controversial to me.
Do people stay home without telling anyone and they wont be able to do that anymore? Or what?
I am in the middle of trying to get e911 functional for Teams direct route calls, based of lis data, my Teams can’t correctly determine the state I am in, much less my current address. It took multiple tickets to get our corporate headquarters to show up correctly instead of an address a half-mile away.
I forsee getting a lot of tickets from this feature.
It very clearly says it’ll be using your work hours and location information. MS is turning your hardware into a GPS tracker for your company.
Except since there’s no actual GPS tracker, it uses your IP address. Microsoft thinks I live in either Virginia or North Dakota or Florida, depending on which part of the company’s VPN I connect to.
I don’t get the problem. Isn’t this the entire point of registering your work location in outlook? Why would you add it and be surprised if others can see it?
The update will use the Work Hours and Location information stored within Outlook to offer up this information, meaning there may be some awkward conversations if your colleagues believe you to be in the office.
Microsoft 365 can help you manage and share your work schedule. New features allow you to specify more details about your work schedule: from where you’re working (remotely or in the office) and whether you work different hours on different days. In addition, you can schedule meetings with others based on their work location, view the work location on people’s profile card, and see your out of office time reflected in your location.
The upcoming update even allows you to not share your location (Again not sure why you wouldn’t share your location since that’s the entire point of adding your location but whatever): https://windowsreport.com/outlooks-work-hours-and-location-statuses-will-become-optional/
Am I completely crazy or is the article from tech radar complete bullshit?
Wouldn’t your coworkers already know you’re working from home by, you know not seeing you at the office?
When I worked in an office, most of my team was in other offices across the world. But we had to be in the office for that TEAM BUILDING
I had to read this like six times, because it was so illogical my brain refused to comprehend.
> Go to the office
> All meetings are on teams because half the team works on other offices.
Yup.
Daily stand-up meeting
On the phone because we’re decentralized
Everyone’s actually sitting + hardly anyone’s even paying attention because they’re at their computers
That’s… incredibly dumb.
If your company is nationwide and has offices all over the country and you work on a distributed team where some people are on the west coast, some are central, and some are on the east coast. In this such event, none of your teammates will physically be able to tell if you are in the office. That’s what this feature is for.
So we can all continue to work from home, from a prescribed office of our employers choosing.
Ahhh the gigantic benefit of seeing a cubicle in the background of your zoom. Thanks Microsoft
We’re concerned that your home doesn’t look soul crushing enough. Please upgrade your home office by installing fluorescent tube lights and covering your walls with rough faded blue grey cloth, or we’ll need you to come into the office.
You can set a background as an image. And if you’re worried about it not being convincing enough, you can use a greenscreen
What? How would this change anything in that scenario? You’re still doing a video call if you want to talk to them.
Welcome to the nonsense that is corporations.
My “office” is a network of interconnected multi-story buildings. It’s actually really convenient for me to know if I need to go meet someone in person or just use video.
Sometimes we have a room booked ahead of time and I learn they are wfh when I get to the empty room.
That’s just poor common courtesy by your coworker. If you have a physical room booked and they are WFH they need to tell you so you don’t waste your time. You shouldn’t be relying on teams status
Yeah, that’s what the meeting invite RSVP is for.
Does your RSVP have options for remote vs in person? My options are “accept”, “decline”, and “tentative.” If I want to tell someone I’m remote that day, it needs to be a separate message.
You can respond with a message included. If I see the location as a physical room and not a zoom link, I accept/tentative and add a comment that I won’t be at the office on that day/time and if we can do it online instead.
OTOH, you should hold calls and meetings in specific rooms - even if the other party is WFH, not in the open space, so…
Yeah, I only mark a meeting room if I’ll be in that meeting room, and I’ll only do that on the 2x/week when we’re expected to be in the office.
Sounds like all the meetings should just be done by video and nothing would be lost.
Oh boy, this sounds like it could get interesting! On one hand, it’s great that Outlook is trying to make our work lives more transparent and efficient. Scheduling meetings has always been a bit of a juggling act, so knowing who’s actually in the office could help a lot.
But yeah, I get the concern about privacy and the potential for some awkward moments. I think it’s gonna be important for companies to use this feature responsibly and to have open conversations about expectations. Maybe this will even push more workplaces to formally recognize the value of flexible working arrangements instead of needing the classic “sneak” day at home.
On the bright side, at least we’re not back in the days of buggy webcams and battling over the last working ethernet cable, right?
Interesting. Teams has been doing this for a few years now, so I assume it’s the same functionality just transferred over to Outlook (which has been going through a massive overhaul recently). For anyone in an MS-based company with Teams being actively used, this is not a new thing.
How does Teams give away your location? I’ve used it extensively, but I’ve never seen someone’s location unless the enter it manually.
It can be turned on by the IT dept in a large office. It has a different icon for in office network connection vs not. Not every IT dept uses it. Some treat other employees like adults, for instance.
Do VPNs make that feature kind of pointless? We can’t access most things from home without going through a VPN. Every where I’ve worked (and gone to school) was like that.
And this is why I haven’t installed Teams on my personal computer. If it was less invasive, I would, but it’s just potential bossware masquerading as “productivity tools.”
That shit stays on my work computer, and I just VPN into it.
I’m not putting any work stuff on by home computer. I’m not giving work admin rights to that.
Having my status turn yellow when I so much as look away from my screen is bad enough. I really hope this “feature” stays off.
It should be noted that work location is a self report tool designed to make collaboration easier so colleagues can know where you are and potentially align their work from home schedules with yours.
It isn’t a spy tool that tracks where you are. It’s basically just an optional tag that you can add to your calendar if you want.
We use a slack app for the same purpose, and it works great.
It’s not just a self reporting feature it seems. Our IT accidentally turned it on (as I understand) for a day by adding building info to one of the supervisors account. It then showed if you were in the same location (building) than your supervisor.
Do you mean it used the information from AD/Entra or was it tracking you?
At a lower level your IT dept logs the IP address you’re accessing m365 resources from.
Yes the security logs absolutely log that, but I haven’t heard of HR forcing IT to actually use those logs for discovering where people work.
We don’t give a shit and have better things to do.
Your M365 admin can already tell by your IP address. Just like they know when you’re looking at porn when your IP randomly hops states for a little while.
Who be looking at porn on the work PC lol. For me I have to give a ’ reason’ to disconnect form the work VPN. I do do anything on work PC besides work tbh
Yeah, never use a work device for anything you’re not actually getting paid to do. To do otherwise is just stupid. Save non-work stuff for your own devices.
I use my personal computer as a work PC. But I run a VM for the work stuff. It’s great.
You don’t have to make things complicated here. If you want to tell people that you use Linux, just say that.
Imagine having so few people at the office that the only way people know you’re working remotely is your Outlook status
