Clutter is a new feature introduced  in Office 365.
This feature automatically analyzes once mailbox , checks the most read/unread emails and moves the unwanted unread emails that are in the users mailbox to a new folder called Clutter.
It creates a new folder called clutter under each user’s mailbox for whom this feature is enabled.

When will the clutter feature available in my office 365 tenant?

Admins who have opted for First Release in their Office 365 Admin Center would be able to see the Clutter feature enabled.

Also check if you have enabled for first release.

In-order to check
Navigate to Office 365 Admin portal

Select Office 365 – click on service settings – choose updates and scroll the option towards right to opt for first release.

If you have opted for standard release then users will need to wait for 3 weeks from November 13th for this feature to be enabled.

By default this clutter feature is not enabled for all users once this feature is available for office 365 tenant.

This feature can be enabled for users through owa
Follow these steps to enable it:

1. Open OWA.
2. Click the Settings (“gear”) icon in the navigation  bar.
3. Click options
4. Select the option clutter and there you will have 2 options to enable or disable the clutter feature as shown below.

We could see the clutter feature is disabled by default for all the users. When we select the first option then it separates those clutter identified emails and then it moves it to the clutter folder.

Once  the user enables this feature in his mailbox he gets a confirmation email in his inbox of clutter enabled and a small summary of this feature as below.

Once this feature is enabled user will  have an option to right click on any emails in inbox and have an option as mark as clutter as shown below.

Also if we right click on any emails that is in clutter folder we have an option to mark as not clutter. This option can be used by end users if in case they identify any important emails moved to the clutter folder.

How does this clutter work ?

Once end user enables  this clutter functionality  it actually needs some time to analyze the way of work the person is doing in his mailbox. It will try to prioritize the users most frequently visited emails and the unread emails. Once it identifies the unused emails it would move all those emails to the clutter folder which would be created under inbox for the user who has clutter feature enabled.

Also if you need this feature to understand more about the way to organize your mailbox you can simply move the unused emails to this clutter folder created in your mailbox. By this way this feature will be able to understand and make this functionality work very fast in your mailbox.

Clutter works only on the emails that have been already processed by Anti-spam filters, Agents and it does not works on any spam emails.Basically it does not create any folders under clutter folder and move emails like rules.

Also if an end user creates a rule and moves few emails to a specific folder under his inbox then clutter feature does not disturb those emails as rules take precedence over clutter feature.Clutter works only on the emails which are not mostly viewed under inbox.

The main functionality of Clutter is to keep the inbox organized and clean only with priority emails and move the unread,untouched emails to the clutter folder.

Lets say if we are receiving daily company updates/changes which are not in top priority of daily job which would always be in unread then those emails would be moved to the clutter folder if its not been seen for some days (not sure about exact time period). So this reduces the end user job to create  rule for this unread daily updates. If the user feels like reading these updates on his free time then he can always come to his clutter folder and have a look at these emails.

This clutter feature works on Outlook Client, OWA and also Active Sync Enabled Devices.
Clutter is a good feature which would be definitely useful for end users to keep their inbox organized way in their daily  busy schedule.

Thanks 

Sathish Veerapandian

MVP – Exchange Server

Tagged: Clutter