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Have you ever received an email message from someone that you don’t know and struggled desperately to figure out who they are? Luckily, when your organization upgrades to Microsoft Outlook 2010 you’ll have quicker access to information about your co-workers without leaving your Inbox.
The other day, after lunch, I returned to my desk and found an urgent email from another Microsoft employee, Jed, asking if I could pass along the design research data from an Outlook study I conducted last week. The problem was, I had no idea who this guy was, and the research is confidential. At a big company like Microsoft, it’s not uncommon to get messages from people that you don’t know, but I still didn’t want to forward the research without knowing exactly who Jed is.
Using the contact hover card in Outlook 2010 I hovered my mouse pointer over Jed’s name at the top of the message and saw that he is a Program Manager. Program Managers design new features for our products, so his need for design research data could be appropriate. Still cautious and unsure how Jed got my email address in the first place, I expanded the hover card to reveal Jed’s full contact card, and then clicked the Organization tab, which allows you to see people in the organizational structure if your organization uses Exchange and Active Directory. From here I realized the he works for Ryan Gregg, a good friend of mine, which was probably where he got my contact information for this research.
Still wanting to know more about Jed, I clicked his name in the contact card to open his SharePoint My Site, an internal Website where employees can list current projects and information about themselves. After seeing Jed’s projects, I was confident to reply to his request and forward him the data he wanted.
I use the contact card all the time to look up people who email me as well as people I have meetings with. If you have Outlook 2010 at your organization, try using the contact card to learn about your coworkers and then let us know what you think.
Josh Meisels
Outlook Program Manager
Comments: (9) Collapse
how do I stop this contact card from poping up all the time???
T.J. – The contact card should only appear when you are hovering over a name or address on a mail. Are you seeing it more often? Josh Meisels, Outlook Program Manager
This is a great upgrade to the contact card. Something that it also does well is telling you whether the person is currently free, and (if they aren't) when they will next be available. Does Outlook 2010 also add this functionality to the global address book for Exchange users? Currently the quickest way to see if someone is available is to create a new appointment, add them to the appointment (you can't right click -> new apt), then check the scheduling tab to see availability.
Is it not possible to show the status (online/away) of people in the inbox?
So that you don't have to open a email to see the status of people.
Outlook Contacts as SaaS! Hi there. This is off-topic, but I wanted to get the Outlook product management team a message. I was wondering if you would consider making a version of Outlook Contacts as a web-based service, instead of a Windows client or Exchange-based product. You could charge a monthly service fee. I like Contacts for my recruiting work, but I now need to share my Contacts with other recruiters/assistants because my recruiting work-load is so heavy. Having Contacts on-line would solve my problem. Thanks very much. rfoster@newfieldwireless.com
Josh, I really like the hover contact info feature. This was somewhat available by right clicking a contact in a message in outlook 2007, is there a way to expand on the information provided to outlook 2007 users if using exchange 2010 server?
G, There is no way to get the hover card in Outlook 2007. I hope that answers your question! Josh Meisels, Outlook Program Manager
How to stop the Contact Card from popping up every time I roll over an email? It is distracting! This is not a good idea :(
Hello, the people in out organization are encouraged to use the GAL for all contact purposes. We remove local contact list so that everybody pulls from the GAL at all times. The problem is the employee photo... since there are no local contacts, is it not possible to attach photos to employees contact cards... perhaps through an Active Directory attribute? Alos, we would like the same picture to show up in the Office Communicator 2007 R2 contact card. Are these possible? Thanks in advanced,
John from U.S.
Comments: (loading) Collapse