I'm not sure why you are having challenges with your Outlook stuff being out of sync. You shouldn't have to go through a 3rd party to sync with that. I have the Microsoft launcher installed and Outlook for Android. Not only is everything integrated, it is so seamless. I now use the Note 8 as a desk phone for conference calls with Skype for Business. The link to open it is right on my home page calendar entries from the Launcher. I can push things back and forth via browser to my Surface Pro. I am also running the Google stuff for personal use via the built in email client. I have had the Note 8 for about 3 months and it is so much better than I ever imagined. Apple will have to do something really compelling to have me go back to an iPhone, and frankly the iPhone X is not even close to being that.
The problem with my work account is that it doesn't not support a lot of basic features like calendar or contacts. It's simply a mailbox. At work, we all have Outlook set up to retrieve e-mails from the mailbox, but contacts and calendars are local to Outlook and do not sync with the e-mail server. The nice thing about iCloud for Windows is that it syncs with Outlook on your local computer, not through the mail server. This means that the contacts and calendars sync along with the e-mails.
I tried Microsoft Launcher/Outlook for Android, and as expected, I get the error that calendars and contacts are not supported with my mail account.
I have found a temporary solution:
I created a new Gmail account for work and set up POP3 importing for e-mails for my work e-mail. I've set this Google account up on my Note8.
Luckily, my contacts do not change very often. I've exported from Outlook to CSV and imported into the Google account I set up. This this syncs with my Note8. I plan on doing this once in a while - probably monthly.
I did find a solution for the calendar - CalendarSync+. As its name suggests, it syncs my outlook calendars with my Google Account automatically. It's a little annoying but gets the job done.
Maybe someone else has a better solution?