Welcome to the 7th Edition of the Microsoft 365 for Construction newsletter: *Managing Projects Using Outlook*

The two most widely used applications in construction are Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Outlook. Excel is extensively used to create ad hoc tracking tools and reports, while Outlook is used as a communication and time management tool. In this newsletter, we will explore how to manage projects using Outlook. I'll discuss Outlook's history, features, roadmap, and how Lydon Solutions has incorporated Outlook into a construction management solution using technology such as Adaptive Cards and Construction Viz.

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I appreciate your support!

Before we get into it, I want to thank our team and clients for all their support over the years. In April of this year, Lydon Solutions will celebrate 15 years in business! 🎆Thank you, thank you, thank you! It has been a heck of a ride. Also, I want to thank all our subscribers and supporters of our newsletters and posts.

Here's a link to the 15 Years in Business article.

Opinions on new tech and the overall theme of the newsletter

To see where a service or product is heading, it's always good to understand its history. Outlook has been around for a while, and its features have changed dramatically over the years.

Outlook History (significant milestones)

1996 - Microsoft released Internet Mail with Internet Explorer 3. It was a basic email application where you could add an email address, subject, body, and small attachments. The Internet was still in its infancy for business use, and Microsoft Explorer was the dominant Internet browser.

It was also the time of dial-up modems. Those of us who grew up in the 1990s will forever remember this sound:

In the 1990s, Outlook was primarily used on construction projects to send and receive emails with extremely small attachments. Sending attachments was a significant undertaking due to poor bandwidth, even if with a dedicated phone line.

I remember having to zip a PDF of our Monthly Cost Report before emailing it to the client. Sending a single 1 MB file would take an entire day, sometimes overnight, and if you lost connection, you had to start all over again. Still, Outlook quickly became a key pillar of project communication.

1997 – Microsoft bought Hotmail, which grew to be one of the most popular email services with over 500 million users. Unfortunately or fortunately, I missed the Hotmail train and used Yahoo Mail, which was also prominent at the time. Hotmail provided a web-based version of email that competed with Google, which had gained momentum with Gmail. Hotmail was eventually merged into Outlook.com in 2012. Outlook.com is still in use, but these accounts are set up primarily for personal emails.

1998 – 2001 – Outlook Express was bundled with Windows. So, new versions of Outlook Express only occurred when a new version of Windows was released, which is not ideal considering that Windows was on a yearly update cycle. The core email features in Outlook that we know today evolved over this period.

1997 – Outlook became part of the Microsoft Office suite, meaning Outlook updates depended on new Office versions. This version integrated email, scheduling, contacts, tasks, and document access. Also, an auto preview of your emails was included. With this version of Outlook, you could create tasks for team members, capture notes, and create meetings, significantly increasing productivity. Outlook 98, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2013 versions followed.

2016 – Outlook was included in the Office 365 bundle. This version included cloud search, the ability to attach files from OneDrive and SharePoint, visibility to recently used files that were available right from the ribbon, and email groups that provided the ability to organize your emails. With this version, you started seeing the integration of apps and data across Office 365 (now Microsoft 365), which made sharing files on construction projects more accessible. Outlook 2019, Microsoft 365, and 2021 followed.

2024 – Two versions of Outlook exist, as well as Outlook.com.

• Microsoft 365 Outlook - The latest version of Outlook in Microsoft 365 is geared toward business users and has begun to integrate with other Microsoft 365 applications. Feature enhancements have been released regularly, including dragging and dropping emails and attachments to the desktop, dictation, To Do for task management, and Copilot AI.

• Outlook for Windows. Outlook for Windows is a free-to-download app for personal and commercial use. It comes prepackaged with Windows, with the intent of having the public-use version of the app without the need for Microsoft 365.

As you can see from history, Microsoft has bundled Outlook differently over the years, from Internet Explorer to Microsoft 365. These changes to the product were driven by many different factors, such as market conditions, adoption of related software products, speed/frequency of updates, integration with other applications, productivity enhancements, new technologies that leverage the cloud, and now Copilot AI. 

From a project management perspective, I have seen Outlook evolve from being a tool for sending emails to becoming a workspace where you go to get things done. Microsoft seems to be breaking down the barriers between applications. So, instead of accessing Excel only in Excel, for example, Microsoft is moving toward applications that can be accessed and opened from any other application. The idea is that whichever application in Microsoft 365 you prefer to use in your daily workflow can become the central hub from which other tasks can be completed.

Also, with Microsoft Loop, Microsoft looks to further bridge the gap between applications.

Loop allows functionality to be enclosed into shareable components that can be added to and updated across Microsoft 365 apps, including Outlook. The web and desktop versions of Outlook allow Loop components to be added into emails.

More on Loop and the future enhancements to Outlook below.

Microsoft 365 features and technologies that may benefit your construction projects.

2024 looks like a great year for Outlook. There are some interesting new features on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365 that will benefit your construction projects, such as:

✔ To Do opens in Outlook – Users won't have to leave Outlook to open a To Do task. Again, Microsoft is bringing systems together, so you don't have to switch applications, making your day-to-day work experience more seamless.

✔ Newsletters – Users can create and track the success of internal email newsletters. This can be handy if you want to keep the project teams informed about a project's status, assuming these are easy to create. 

✔ Follow meetings - Follow is the ideal RSVP option for meetings you can't attend but still want to stay engaged and receive information about. If you can't make the meeting, this might be a great feature to stay in the loop. With so many meetings going on today, I can see this feature being heavily used in construction, which, let's face it, most of the time, we are overbooked!

✔ Steam Videos - Record a video of yourself, your screen, or both directly from Outlook and insert the recording in your email. This feature could be handy if you are already in Outlook while on your phone/tablet in the field and want to capture project images quickly without filling out a daily report.

✔ Outlook Message Reminders - When Outlook identifies that a user could have forgotten to respond to or follow up on an email message, it could bring that email back to the top of the inbox, marking it as needing an action. How many emails have you sent where that have disappeared into the ether? This feature will at least let your recipient take one more bite at the apple before the email is totally ignored.😊

✔ Open a Teams Meeting Chat - For meetings created as Teams Meetings, users can open the Teams meeting chat directly from the meeting event on their Outlook mobile calendar. Once again, integrating these Microsoft 365 applications will simplify useability and streamline your workflow.

✔ OneDrive for Business - Quickly access your OneDrive without having to leave Outlook! This is a huge advantage for companies that use OneDrive to store files and Outlook for email communication. You will be able to easily drag and drop files between applications, which will speed up your workflow. It also allows project emails to be easily copied and pasted into project folders in OneDrive without switching apps.

✔ Microsoft Loop – This new app was announced in 2021 and has slowly picked up steam. Significant enhancements will be coming to Loop in 2024 as the user community embraces cross-application components. We have already seen meeting minutes and checklists for projects created in Loop components that were shared through Teams and Outlook. Microsoft is bringing functionality and file types closer together with products like Loop. If you are not familiar with Loop, check out some of the features:

✔ Adaptive Cards - Adaptive Cards are another exciting technology that can be integrated into Outlook emails to help manage your projects. Adaptive Cards are platform-agnostic snippets of UI that can view and collect data within the email. Think of Adaptive Cards as customized forms that connect to Microsoft 365 so that users can take action right within the email without having to navigate to another application. Check out this article to find out more:

How Adaptive Cards Can Turbocharge Your Construction Project Management Processes

New features and functionality of Construction Viz, our construction project management solution for Microsoft 365.

Since Construction Viz deploys to Microsoft 365, we can leverage Microsoft Outlook to deliver a tailored solution for your unique project. Specifically, Construction Viz can integrate with Outlook to help you better manage your projects in the following ways:

• Ease of administration. Emails can be dragged and dropped to/from Outlook to SharePoint or OneDrive, where Construction Viz can interact with the files using the File Manager app. You can also use Power Automate workflows to route emails to specific lists or libraries. Check out this article to find out more: How Can I Manage Project Emails?

• Links to records for approval. Any Construction Viz application can send requests for approval emails that include links to a record. You can open records by clicking the link and signing in using your Microsoft 365 login.
• Work entirely in email with Adaptive cards. If you don't want to have external users in your Microsoft 365 tenant, code snippets can be embedded into email to send and collect data from Outlook into Construction Viz. Find out more on how Construction Viz utilizes Adaptive Cards here:

Manage your projects in Outlook! No, really!

• AI. We are building several AI models to solve construction challenges. One model we will announce in the coming weeks is our email document processor, which will save time processing records and improve the organization and communication between contractors and owners. We are also working on AI models that will utilize Construction Viz's underlying SharePoint site lists and libraries so you can query your project data in your Microsoft 365 tenant. Keep an eye out for future blogs/articles on these AI topics.

Future events, training, webinars, final thoughts, your take, and wrap-up

Final Thoughts

Outlook is no longer just for sending emails. So, if you use Outlook heavily to manage project information and communication, you are not "out of the loop." Much like Teams, Outlook is becoming a productivity workspace where you conduct day-to-day business and link to other available applications so that you never have to leave Outlook.

Wrap Up

Thanks for reading the seventh edition of our LinkedIn Newsletter. I hope that the information provided helps you get the most out of Outlook and manage your projects.

Please subscribe and share if you find the newsletter valuable. You can follow our Lydon Solutions LinkedIn company page here and join our new Microsoft 365 for Construction group here where you can ask questions and share ideas with the larger team.

Also, check out our Lydon Solutions website for more content and request a free one-hour consultation or a demo of Construction Viz here.