Outlook and Sunrise to merge, Microsoft redesigns its email and calendar app

In February this year Microsoft acquired Sunrise, a company that created a calendar app for iOS and Android. While announcing the acquisition , Rajesh Jha, Corporate Vice President Outlook and Office 365 at Microsoft said, “We are making this acquisition because we believe a reinvention in the way people use calendars on mobile devices is long overdue.” Close to 7 months since the acquisition, Microsoft has made the first move to merge its Outlook app for email and the Sunrise calendar. In a post on the official Microsoft blog, Javier Soltero, Corporate Vice President of the Outlook team said, “To help us continue to accelerate this momentum, we asked our new friends from Sunrise for some help.” Soltero added that they have been working closely with the team at Sunrise to use and “put their design expertise and fresh thinking to work on helping us deliver a more beautiful and improved experience.” Outlook users on iOS will be witnessing the roll out of the new app today. Android updates will begin in early November. Listing out the modifications in the app, Soltero’s post added that the app will now have a much more cleaner look. In addition, the attachment options have been simplified and are made more easier to access. File and Photo attachments are now available in one click. In addition, you could choose from a range of options such as Archiving, Flagging an email, or marking them as Read or Unread by simply swiping left or right on the message.