14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has officially announced that a series of Outlook changes previously available only for testers and users who manually opted is ready to go live for all users on Windows.
The shared calendar improvements in Outlook for Windows are therefore out of preview, coming with improved reliability and substantially more polished sync latency for shared calendars and delegated calendars.
Announced in July 2019 as a preview, so nearly two years ago, this massive update for Microsoft Outlook on Windows was exclusively available only for testers who wanted to try it out early. But following the Build developer conference that kicked off this week, Microsoft says the new feature is finally ready to go live for everybody.
Gradual rollout
“In July 2019, we announced the preview in Outlook for Windows which has remained opt-in until now, as we turn this on in production. Eventually, it will be just “on”, but this is a journey and arguably the biggest change to Outlook for Windows since its initial release in 1997, so we want our every step to be cautious,” Microsoft explains.
“With Version 2103 (March 2021 update), the new experience reached feature parity with the classic experience, so we have removed the preview label that was previously shown next to shared calendars that were enabled for the new experience. Since summer 2019, we polished the experience and fixed bugs, thanks to many customer reports. With tens of thousands of daily users on the preview, we feel confident now that the experience is going to delight calendar delegates.”
According to the company’s official figures, the new calendar capabilities in Outlook for Windows are currently enabled for some 10 percent of the eligible users in the Current channel and already running version 2103. However, the software giant plans to expand the availability in stages throughout the spring and the summer, so more Outlook users on Windows are expected to receive it in the coming months.