A new Microsoft prototype offered as a free download is designed to assess incoming emails and prioritize them according to their importance. The tool is a Microsoft Office Labs project set up to integrate exclusively with Office Outlook 2007. Email Prioritizer runs on Exchange Server and represents a taste of an email overload management utility. But just a taste since it is nothing more than a prototype, not even in Beta stage.

"We understand that email overload is a challenge: today, many people get too much email and have a hard time keeping up with it. Not only do people receive a high volume of mail, the mail may arrive at inconvenient times. There are a lot of good ideas about how to help people with email overload and we're testing a few of those ideas in Office Labs," revealed a member of Office Labs.

Email Prioritizer does bring interesting functionality to the table, enabling end users to essentially filter the most important pieces of email out of all the mundane items that end up in their box. The tool enables users to pause all incoming emails for a period of time anywhere from 10 minutes to 4 hours. At the same time, Microsoft has integrated a set of criteria into Email Prioritizer based on which the add-in is able to rate email. The company informed that the collection of priorities can be controlled and adjusted by the users.

Email Prioritizer features "a "Do Not Disturb" button that stops incoming mail delivery so you can work without interruptions. Email priorities are assigned to incoming mail so you can focus on the most important mail first. With a "0-3 stars" ranking system, you can focus on email messages that are most important to you. These priorities are based on algorithms from Microsoft Research," the Office Labs representative added.

Email Prioritizer is available for download here.