Microsoft Corp. has turned the long-lagging web version of Outlook into a more integrated part of its online productivity suite with a landmark update that began rolling out yesterday and promises to help users manage their messages a lot more effectively. What ties the vision together is a new universal toolbar with features that should be familiar from competing email services.

You are now able to pin and archive messages based on importance to organize your inbox, which is one of the main focus points in the upgrade. What should come as an even bigger help for heavy email users on that front is the new “Sweep” option introduced in conjunction, which makes it possible to apply rules to different addresses.

A recruitment professional, for instance, could use that functionally to have unreviewed resumes from the headhunting agency with which their organization works automatically deleted after a certain number of days. And a busy field agent might leverage Sweep to delete all but their latest work order to avoid accidently travelling to the wrong customer location.

The messages that end up getting through to your inbox can be viewed in the regular mode or through a new single-line view that, as the name suggests, displays email previews in the same line as the subject much like Gmail and opens selected threads in the same window. That should come as a welcome replacement to the pop-up opening mechanism used before for workers with a lot of messages to go through every day.

Sending emails has been made easier as well as part of the update thanks to a slew of usability improvements starting with the small but vital addition of an autocompletion function that filters contacts as an address or name is typed in the recipient field. And once it’s time to get down to crafting the message itself, Outlook now provides image editor that allows for limited customization with shadow effects, bordering and a number of other options.

That visual graphic also extends to the complementary apps available with the email service in Outlook 365, most notably the calendar, which has been enhanced with a five-day weather forecast that manifests as a small icon that symbolizes the forecast for the day. Users can choose their own icons for special events, like meetings, from a pre-included selection courtesy of Microsoft’s designers.

Photo via Microsoft