Microsoft Send brings chat-style messaging to Outlook emails
To help ease the burden of email, Google created Inbox, and now Microsoft is looking to lend a hand, too. With Send, you can keep it brief for those times when "in-and-out email" is all that's needed. It's less about organization and more like an IM-like option for your inbox. The app provides the short convos that text or IMs usually afford, but allows access to your email contacts and stores all of the threads in Outlook for later reference. In other words, you can quickly send a "meet me downstairs" to a colleague without having to make a phone call or send an email with a subject line, etc. There's also a Quick Reply tool with some pre-entered responses to save you even more time -- things like "on my way" or "I'll get back to you."
Send only displays the short emails that were created/received in the app, so all of those longer messages remain in Outlook or your app of choice. On the back end, though, Send messages are treated like regular work correspondence, and built-in tools for IT departments are there, too. For now, Send is only available on iOS in the US and Canada, but it'll arrive on Windows Phone and Android in the near future. You'll also need an Office 365 business or education account to give it a go, which means a lot of us will have to wait for wider availability "in the coming months."
