  Email continues to serve as a central medium for managing collaborations.
While unstructured email messaging is lightweight and conducive to
coordination, it is easy to overlook commitments and requests for
collaborations that are embedded in the text of free-flowing communications.
Twenty-one years ago, Bellotti et al. proposed TaskMaster with the goal of
redesigning the email interface to have explicit task management capabilities.
Recently, AI-based task recognition and reminder services have been introduced
in major email systems as one approach to managing asynchronous collaborations.
While these services have been provided to millions of people around the world,
there is little understanding of how people interact with and benefit from
them. We explore knowledge workers' experiences with Microsoft's Viva Daily
Briefing Email to better understand how AI-powered reminders can support
asynchronous collaborations. Through semi-structured interviews and surveys, we
shed light on how AI-powered reminders are incorporated into workflows to
support asynchronous collaborations. We identify what knowledge workers prefer
AI-powered reminders to remind them about and how they would like to interact
with these reminders. Using mixed methods and a self-assessment methodology, we
investigate the relationship between information workers' work styles and the
perceived value of the Viva Daily Briefing Email to identify users who are more
likely to benefit from AI-powered reminders for asynchronous collaborations. We
conclude by discussing the experiences and futures of AI-powered reminders for
collaborative tasks and asynchronous collaborations.
