This type of marriage between services is not unheard of, especially if you use Google Workspace. Google makes several of its workspace services accessible through Gmail, and this includes Google Meet. You’re able to start a meeting right from the Gmail app, and it really makes setting up meetings with clients a lot easier.
Microsoft Outlook is getting chat capabilities from Teams
Now, for the time being, it does not seem like you’ll be able to start full video meetings from Outlook. However, Outlook seems to be borrowing the chat capabilities from Teams. While Microsoft Teams is a well-made video chat platform, you can also send and receive text-based messages. A lot of people use this feature to communicate with their colleagues without needing to set up a whole video call. Microsoft Outlook is another communication platform that uses text-based conversations, but emails are very different from regular messages. You wouldn’t expect to have a long real-time conversation with the person through emails. This is where the integration with Microsoft Teams comes in. Apparently, Microsoft saw the need amongst Outlook users to communicate directly with team members using a different form of messaging. So, the company added to the official Microsoft 365 roadmap, and it reads “an easy team chat experience from Outlook in the context of a meeting for participants.” We are not 100% sure what that means, but we can bet that it means an easier way to access chats in Microsoft Teams right from Outlook. So, if you’re using Outlook, and you need to send a message to a colleague, but you don’t want to email, then you can simply send a message through Teams. For the time being, this feature is not out yet. It’s part of the road map, so it’s still in development. However, you can expect to launch sometime in March 2023.
