Outlook Has Joined the Social Party Train

If it has not come to your attention, Microsoft Outlook has designed the Social Connector. I’m running Outlook 2007 on my system.

You have four choices at the time of this writing:

1. Facebook;
2. LinkedIn;
3. MySpace; and
4. Windows Live Messenger.

I have chosen to integrate Facebook and LinkedIn into my Outlook. The process for downloading and activating the various social networks is simple enough. However, when prompted for your LinkedIn “User Name,” that’s not quite accurate. You will need to provide your sign-in email address (just like signing into LinkedIn directly). The request for your user name in Facebook is correct, mine is layne.tinsley. So just a heads up with LinkedIn or you will get the message, “Either the User Name or Password is incorrect.”

This Is What You Can Expect to See in Outlook

1. Home view: you will not see the People Pane here.
2. Email Inbox: a People Pane appears below the message by default. As you select the email message, all information related to that contact will appear. An icon that identifies the social network you are connected with for this person will display emails, meetings, attachments, and updates between the two of you. Cool!
3. Calendar view: I don’t have appointments or calendar items that were requested or sent via email. So I can’t explain the view on this.
4. Contacts: you will not see the People Pane when viewing all contacts. Once you open an individual contact card, all related social media details and information will populate for that specific contact. Cool again!

Here is an example of what you will see in viewing a specific Contact Card.

Pros: one of the things this tool alleviates is the need to sort your email by name.  The People Pane populates the specific contact related information from Outlook and the social networks.

Cons: haven’t really seen any as of yet, but would love to hear back from you if you see a downside.

Please take the time to share your thoughts on what you think of having a Social Connector incorporated into your email and calendaring system. Do you think is it just one more thing contributing to distraction and attention deficit to doing your job? Or is it just easier to have access to all your various email and information in one place; thus, reducing randomly checking the Internet and/or your phone?

With love and appreciation,