Fall Creators Update Feature Focus: My People

Fall Creators Update Feature Focus: My People

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update includes My People, a new people-centric user experience that lets you access your favorite contacts directly from the Windows taskbar.

Note: This article contains information from the Windows 10 Field Guide. This book is now being updated for free with a ton of new content describing new Windows 10 features from the Fall Creators Update. –Paul

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As you may recall, My People was originally scheduled for inclusion in the Creators Update. But Microsoft delayed its release to the Fall Creators Update so that more third-party services would be available.

My People lets you pin up to three contacts directly to the taskbar, where they will appear as buttons next to the People button.

Note: The People button resembles two Weeble-like heads. If you don’t see the People button in the taskbar, right-click an empty area of the taskbar and select “Show People button” from the pop-up menu that appears.

If you pin more than three contacts, the others will appear in My People, which is a pop-up pane that displays when you select the People taskbar button.

Note: My People makes the most sense on a traditional form factor PC, and not on a tablet or other touch-first device where you might use Tablet Mode. The reason? Those pinned contacts don’t appear in the taskbar in Tablet Mode, so you need to perform an extra step to access them.

Here’s what you can do with My People.

Pin a contact to the taskbar. To pin a favorite contact to the taskbar, open My People and use the Suggested pins list or the search box to find the contact. When you select the contact you want, a button for that contact will appear in the taskbar to the left of the My People button. And a contact sheet for that contact will open.

Note: You can also pin a contact to the taskbar from within the People app. To do so, open People and find a favorite contact in the Contacts list. Then, right-click on their name in the Contacts pane, and then choose “Pin to taskbar” from the pop-up menu that appears.

Remove a contact from the taskbar. To remove a pinned contact—from the taskbar or from the My People pane—right-click it and select “Unpin from taskbar” in the pop-up menu that appears.

Use an app to communicate with a contact. My People lets you use apps to interact with your contacts. To do so, select the contact from the taskbar (or from within My People) to display their contact sheet. Then, select the app you’d like to use. By default, People, Mail, and Skype are available, and if you install a compatible app from the Windows Store, it will appear here as well. For example, you can use Mail to send that contact an email message, and this interaction will occur directly in the contact sheet; there’s no need to find and open Mail first.

Note: You can use Skype integration with My People to chat with your favorite contacts directly from the taskbar. People integration lets you access the timeline and contact details for that contact.

See which apps are available. Compatible apps are automatically added to My People as they’re installed or updated by Windows Store. You can see which apps you have that are compatible by opening My People and selecting the Apps view. (Mail, People, and Skype are included with Windows and are compatible, so you should at least see these three choices.

Link contacts. While this job is perhaps better done in the People app, My People does provide an interface for linking (or unlinking) contacts from multiple accounts. To access this, open a contact with My People and then select the “Combine duplicate contacts for this person to see all the apps you have in common.”

Edit a contact’s details. To edit a contact’s details with My People, open that person’s contact sheet and then select More (“…”) and then “Edit contact.”

 

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Conversation 39 comments

  • Rob_Wade

    14 September, 2017 - 9:52 am

    <p>I just prefer to keep nothing on the Taskbar, since I don't use it, and just refer to the regular People app. Nobody is so important that I need to access them via this MyPeople thing. I'm glad I don't have this enabled (particularly since Microsoft REFUSES to allow Tablet Mode to work when you have multiple monitors).</p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    14 September, 2017 - 9:52 am

    <p>It works alright I guess. Considering I know zero people who use Skype, though, it's about 85% pointles. I just think it looks cool.</p>

    • TheJoeFin

      Premium Member
      14 September, 2017 - 11:33 am

      <blockquote><a href="#176672"><em>In reply to jimchamplin:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>If there was some Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Discord integration it would be useful.</p>

      • MutualCore

        15 September, 2017 - 2:19 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#176737"><em>In reply to TheJoeFin:</em></a></blockquote><p>Nah Microsoft doesn't want to be successful.</p>

  • Tony Barrett

    14 September, 2017 - 9:59 am

    <p>With over two years of Win10 getting rammed down our throats – constant updates and patches that seem to add little and cause more problems than they're worth, are people actually getting a bit tired of all this now? Do we just want to sit down and enjoy life a little rather than having to deal with yet another update to a device that should actually be staying in the background and keeping a low profile rather than getting in our way all the time? Microsoft seem intent on treating a desktop OS like a mobile device, but this just seems to make everything much more difficult. Insiders seem to be getting tired of this too. Windows doesn't make your life better, it just used to be there as a program launcher to get to the apps that do mean something. Now it just doesn't shutup. I've been going back to Win7 just for some peace and quiet.</p>

    • reid

      14 September, 2017 - 10:31 am

      <blockquote><a href="#176678"><em>In reply to ghostrider:</em></a></blockquote><p>We recently started deploying Win 10 LTSB in some circumstances to get away from the mandatory updating and testing. We may switch all of our images to LTSB at some point. This is in response to our current need to update 1000+ machines that are running build 1511 over the next month or so. We've had a couple of our older machines brick when deploying this update, so this should be fun. </p><p><br></p>

    • Daniel Blois

      14 September, 2017 - 11:39 am

      <blockquote><a href="#176678"><em>In reply to ghostrider: Actually, no the new features they are releasing are making me more productive. </em></a></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • Win74ever

        14 September, 2017 - 4:42 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#176741"><em>In reply to Daniel_Blois:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>The 2 features that I'm interested so far in Windows 10: built in night light and the GPU utilization in Task Manager. Everything else is useless to me.</p>

  • Username

    14 September, 2017 - 10:30 am

    <p>All this effort for just 3 people using it.</p>

  • reid

    14 September, 2017 - 10:32 am

    <p>Interesting, no Skype for Business support.</p>

  • PeteB

    14 September, 2017 - 10:40 am

    <p>Useless "feature" nobody will use. When will MS understand the PC is not a phone. How about some actual new features for desktop users?</p><p><br></p><p>Win7 remains the most popular version of Windows on the planet for a reason, and more needless social/mobile bloat like this isn't going to change anything. They need to get serious.</p>

    • Daniel Blois

      14 September, 2017 - 11:39 am

      <blockquote><a href="#176711"><em>In reply to PeteB: This is a useful feature that they did not go far enough. One of the most important uses for computers EVEN on a desktop is communication. </em></a></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    14 September, 2017 - 10:58 am

    <p>I hope Teams is updated to support this.</p>

    • Polycrastinator

      14 September, 2017 - 11:16 am

      <blockquote><a href="#176719"><em>In reply to lvthunder:</em></a></blockquote><p>+1. Teams isn't a store app. For me, in a corporate environment, neither is Outlook, neither is Skype for Business. Those are the apps that I actually need to be in here. Until that happens, it's pretty but useless.</p>

      • TheJoeFin

        Premium Member
        14 September, 2017 - 11:30 am

        <blockquote><a href="#176721"><em>In reply to Polycrastinator:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I'm afraid Microsoft will never be able to figure this out. They are disappointed UWP isn't taking off, yet they don't adopt UWP for their core products. They are disappointed that enterprises don't want to move to Win10 from Win7, but they don't integrate new Win10 features with their own enterprise products.</p><p><br></p><p>It is crazy making. </p>

        • Polycrastinator

          14 September, 2017 - 1:41 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#176736"><em>In reply to TheJoeFin:</em></a></blockquote><p>Yes, all of this. It's like none of the divisions talk. They all need to be working towards making these headline features functional when they drop. That Microsoft thought it reasonable to release Windows 10 S without corporate support for the store versions of the Office apps remains absolutely staggering, as is the lack of other core corporate O365 apps from the Windows Store.</p>

  • Smidgerine

    Premium Member
    14 September, 2017 - 12:42 pm

    <p>Why not Groupme? </p>

  • Chris Payne

    14 September, 2017 - 12:59 pm

    <p>Is this not another attempt at the people hub from Windows Phone days? That didn't work because of lack of 3rd buy in, no? Why is this going to work?</p>

  • Cdorf

    Premium Member
    14 September, 2017 - 1:30 pm

    <p>I still think its stupid you can't use traditional Outlook for the email</p>

  • Win74ever

    14 September, 2017 - 4:30 pm

    <p>The first thing I'm gonna do when I finish installing the Fail Creators is disable and hide this useless thing.</p>

  • anchovylover

    14 September, 2017 - 5:55 pm

    <p>At the time of writing this there are twenty eight comments and not one is completely supportive of this new feature. I'm a little surprized by this as I can see it being useful for some people. In any event, I assume it can be removed from the taskbar for those not wanting it. Choice is a good thing.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      15 September, 2017 - 5:11 am

      <blockquote><a href="#176830"><em>In reply to anchovylover:</em></a></blockquote><p>I think the problem is lack of integration with Microsoft products, like Outlook, Teams/Skype for Business etc.</p><p>This is a classic tool that would be useful in business, but it doesn't seem to support Microsoft's business portfolio, looking at the other comments. If that is the case, I can understand why the commenters are being negative.</p>

  • nbplopes

    14 September, 2017 - 6:48 pm

    <p>MS is going on circles with this comm stuff without ever tackling the things that matter in this context.</p><p><br></p><p>Apple Continuity completely change my communication while on a PC or Tablet. Granted both from Apple but putting this aside because in the end of the day what matters is the how not with what.</p><p><br></p><p>Today in my practice it's a standard affair receiving and making both calls and messages from a PC connected with a Smartphone without needing to subscribe to any other service but the a standard subscription of the phone. Search a contact on the Mac, click a button , start a call and bang talking without ever picking up my smarphone or subscribing to another service. Messages/SMS the same thing. The thing Siri/Spotlight(search) even searches the SMS threads. </p><p><br></p><p>The thing of MS is that since it bought Skype it has been trying to replace the service of Telcos/Carriers for years. But here is the drill, it does not replace because people still need to pay them to have the Smarphone working. So in the end of the day, Skype for things such as Calls and Messages it's just an extra cost because not everyone uses it even if they have a SkypeID, but everyone has a phone number and uses it everyday.</p><p><br></p><p>Instead of moving forward we are going around in circles with PC Comms for two decades just because of the above. They had Windows Phone and done nothing at this level. Why? To Push Skype has the goto Cross device communication platform, totally disregarding what is useful for the user.</p>

  • SvenJ

    14 September, 2017 - 7:39 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">"Those pinned contacts don’t appear in the taskbar in Tablet Mode, so you need to perform an extra step to access them."</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">Those pinned contacts do appear in the taskbar in Tablet Mode on my Surface 3. </span></p>

  • potzy1

    14 September, 2017 - 9:28 pm

    <p>My work just gave us an option of MacBook pros or HP elite books. I took the hp because my familiarity with windows all these years, but I'm starting to think I've made a mistake. At least the Office suite still works better, but we had to dump skype for business because all the issues with it running on Macs.</p>

  • JustMe

    Premium Member
    15 September, 2017 - 10:05 am

    <p>Interesting that you dont mention Outlook. Of course, Outlook is not a Store app. Also, why the limit the number of contacts you can pin to the Taskbar to three?</p><p><br></p><p>Honestly, I dont see the point of this. To me, its just another useless feature to uninstall or disable, which is to say its par for the course at Microsoft. My desktop *isnt* a phone – I neither need or want one-button access to a contact on my desktop as my email program is open almost continuously on any machine I am using anyway. Most people, if they need to email or IM a contact, will do exactly that with the applications they are familiar with. If My People isnt going to allow that to happen with the tools people use (for example, email someone using Outlook, as opposed to Mail), this will get mounted to /ignore, if its paid any attention at all. </p>

  • MutualCore

    15 September, 2017 - 2:19 pm

    <p>Too bad there are no popular contact methods like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Twitter.</p>

  • Travis

    16 September, 2017 - 7:22 pm

    <p>I saw another new feature of the FCU. I've been waiting for this. If you want to get off the Insider builds there is now an option to get off the Insider builds once the next public release is installed.</p><p><br></p><p><img src=""></p><p><br></p>

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