View and manage email follow-up in Outlook
With Follow-up, you can easily manage email follow-up in Outlook when you still need to take action or are waiting for a reply. From Outlook, you can add a follow-up directly to a message and decide when OAS should bring it back to your attention.
OAS distinguishes between Action required and Waiting for reply. This gives you a single overview of messages that still require action from you and messages for which you are waiting for someone else to respond.
In addition to a follow-up date, you can optionally set a deadline. The follow-up date determines when the message needs your attention, while the deadline indicates when something actually needs to be completed or submitted.
From the OAS Dashboard, you can view and manage all outstanding follow-ups. OAS can also recognise when a reply arrives for a message for which you are waiting for a response.
On this page
- Create a follow-up
- Action required and Waiting for reply
- Working with a deadline
- View and manage follow-ups
- Automatically recognise replies
Create a follow-up
You create a follow-up directly from an email in Outlook. Right-click the message and select OAS → Follow-up. First choose the type of follow-up you want to create: Action required or Waiting for reply.
Then choose when you want the email to be brought back to your attention. You can quickly select Today, Tomorrow, In 3 days or Next week. With Choose date…, you can select a different follow-up date yourself.
If the email also has a fixed date by which something must be completed or submitted, choose With deadline…. This allows you to set a separate deadline with a date and time in addition to the follow-up date.
The follow-up you create automatically appears in the Follow-up section of the OAS Dashboard. From there, you can view and manage the outstanding follow-up.
Action required and Waiting for reply
When creating a follow-up, you choose between Action required and Waiting for reply. This indicates why an email needs your attention again later.
Choose Action required when you still need to do something with the email yourself. For example, you may need to reply to a message, prepare a quotation, provide information or complete another task. The selected follow-up date determines when this action needs your attention in OAS.
Use Waiting for reply when you have already taken action and are now waiting for someone else to respond. For example, after asking a question, requesting information or sending a proposal.
OAS keeps track of both types of follow-up separately. With Waiting for reply, OAS can also recognise when a reply to the relevant message arrives. This makes it easy to see which matters are still waiting for a response and which follow-ups have already received a reply.
You can later open, postpone, complete or cancel a follow-up from the OAS Dashboard.
Working with a deadline
A deadline is different from the normal follow-up date. The follow-up date determines when OAS brings an email back to your attention. A deadline indicates when the associated action actually needs to be completed or submitted.
A deadline is optional. You therefore do not need to set one for ordinary follow-ups. Use a deadline, for example, when a quotation must be submitted before a specific time, information must be provided by a certain date or another fixed due date applies.
When creating the follow-up, select With deadline…. You then set both the follow-up date and the date and exact time of the deadline. This allows OAS to bring the email to your attention earlier while keeping the actual deadline separately.
In the OAS Dashboard, the Follow-up date and Deadline are therefore shown separately. An approaching deadline is clearly displayed, for example as Tomorrow 12:57. Once the specified time has passed, this changes to Deadline passed.
The deadline does not change the normal follow-up status. The statuses Scheduled, Active and Overdue are determined by the follow-up date. The deadline provides additional information so you can immediately see how much time remains to complete the relevant action.
View and manage follow-ups
Through Follow-up in the OAS Dashboard, you get a central overview of all outstanding follow-ups. At the top, you can immediately see how many follow-ups are listed under Action required and Waiting for reply, and how many follow-ups are now Overdue.
For each follow-up, the overview shows the status, type, subject, contact or sender, follow-up date, any deadline and the associated mailbox. The filter above the overview lets you choose which follow-ups you want to view. This makes email follow-up in Outlook easy, because one screen shows you which actions are still outstanding and which messages are still awaiting a reply.
The status immediately shows where a follow-up stands. Scheduled means that the follow-up date has not yet been reached. Once a follow-up requires attention, it becomes active. If the follow-up date passes without the follow-up being completed, it is shown as Overdue.
Select a follow-up to use the available actions at the bottom of the screen. Open opens the original message in Outlook and Reply lets you compose a response immediately. Postpone moves the follow-up to a later time. When the action has been completed, select Complete. Use Cancel to remove a follow-up that is no longer needed.
Use Refresh to update the overview immediately, for example after something has changed in Outlook regarding a message or follow-up.
Automatically recognise replies
For a follow-up of the type Waiting for reply, OAS monitors whether a response to the relevant email arrives. You do not need to check Outlook manually or keep track of which messages have already received a reply.
When Outlook is running and a new message arrives, OAS checks whether the reply belongs to an outstanding follow-up. If a corresponding response is recognised, OAS automatically processes it in the follow-up.
This keeps the Waiting for reply overview up to date and allows you to focus on messages that are genuinely still waiting for a response.
Automatic recognition works in the background. You do not need to create a separate rule or enable an additional setting for each follow-up.
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