The New Outlook: AJAX-VM

This post was originally published here by Rich Campagna.

Waking up in the morning to the surprise of a freshly redesigned cloud application is the tiniest little bit like Christmas morning (yes, I know we’re past Christmas, but I’m running with this anyway). You first notice a new font, color scheme, maybe even a new menu or icons. The anticipation builds – what new features are in store for me today? Improved search? Yes, please! Easier scheduling? Finally! 

These, and other presents awaited me when I logged into “the new Outlook” this morning, and I couldn’t wait to unwrap them. Fortunately, the Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) that Bitglass IT leverages includes Bitglass AJAX-VM technology. Without Bitglass, I would have run into breakages when this new app rolled out, waiting for our CASB vendor to scramble and repair proxy rewriting code (potentially leaving me to enjoy an unplanned powder day in Tahoe, so I guess it wouldn’t have been all bad). 

Here’s a screenshot (with some of the details of my email obscured). Everything works flawlessly, as expected, with our engineers dreaming peacefully, visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads.

Interestingly, G Suite also rolled out a substantial update last week and our VP of Products happened to catch screenshots of both the prior version and the new version of the app running simultaneously on his machine (you can see quite a few differences on the app below, such as the share button and slide sorter). They rolled out the update between when he opened the first doc and when he opened the second. Issues with inline editing? Nope. Browser crash? Nope. Engineers waking up in the middle of the night to patch code? Nope.

Screen Shot 2019-01-31 at 8.12.01 AM

Here’s an action shot of one of our engineers* as this Outlook update was rolling out:

Photo:Shine Wire

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