Outlook and Teams get new features to protect users' mental health Apr 20, 2021 12:00 EDT with 2 comments Microsoft has announced a couple of new features that are designed to help workers take breaks in the digital age, especially given the number of meetings that can fill up a workday. The company says that back-to-back meetings with no breaks are one of the main reasons for the digital overload that many workers experiences in its Work Trend Index research. The first feature is for Outlook, and it basically makes all meetings shorter by default within an organization. Last year, Microsoft made it possible for individual users to create these rules for themselves, but now employers can set it at the organization level, making meetings shorter for everyone so they can catch a break. Rules can be set so that the break is at the start of the meeting (as in, the meeting starts late) or at the end (meaning it will end early), and employees are notified of the company policy once it's in place, so they can understand why their meeting times may have changed by themselves. This is available starting today.