Sneaking in a work from home day could soon be a bit trickier thanks to a new update coming to Microsoft Outlook.
The email provider is rolling out a new feature that will allow users to spot which of their co-workers or colleagues is currently in the office, and therefore possibly free for a quick meeting or able to reply to a message.
The update will use the Work Hours and Location information stored within Outlook to offer up this information, meaning there may be some awkward conversations if your colleagues believe you to be in the office.
In its entry in the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the company notes that the feature will be “always on”, meaning there may be no getting around what it represents as your office presence.
It can be turned on by the IT dept in a large office. It has a different icon for in office network connection vs not. Not every IT dept uses it. Some treat other employees like adults, for instance.
Having my status turn yellow when I so much as look away from my screen is bad enough. I really hope this “feature” stays off.
And this is why I haven’t installed Teams on my personal computer. If it was less invasive, I would, but it’s just potential bossware masquerading as “productivity tools.”
That shit stays on my work computer, and I just VPN into it.
I’m not putting any work stuff on by home computer. I’m not giving work admin rights to that.
It should be noted that work location is a self report tool designed to make collaboration easier so colleagues can know where you are and potentially align their work from home schedules with yours.
It isn’t a spy tool that tracks where you are. It’s basically just an optional tag that you can add to your calendar if you want.
We use a slack app for the same purpose, and it works great.
It’s not just a self reporting feature it seems. Our IT accidentally turned it on (as I understand) for a day by adding building info to one of the supervisors account. It then showed if you were in the same location (building) than your supervisor.
Do you mean it used the information from AD/Entra or was it tracking you?
I do not know if the setting is an Entra setting, I don’t have access. I’m just friendly with IT. This is what I believe they were talking about given their description. But not tracking, no. It’s basically a here/not here situation. You’re either tethered to local networking or not.
Do VPNs make that feature kind of pointless? We can’t access most things from home without going through a VPN. Every where I’ve worked (and gone to school) was like that.