Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 13 Mar 2023

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From YouTube: Add-in Support for New Outlook

Description

A 12-minute Developer-focused demo from Nikita Mittal and Juan Balmori. An overview on the new Outlook that’s available for Windows today and for all platforms in time. What does this mean for developers? New Outlook is coming, web add-ins are going to be the main extensibility option for new Outlook, and the Microsoft team is super committed to add the richness needed to enable and support moving your existing COM add-in investments to web add-ins.

This PnP Community demo is taken from the Office Add-ins community call – February 2023, recorded on February 8, 2023.

Demo Presenters
• Nikita Mittal, Senior Product Manager (Microsoft)
• Juan Balmori, Principal Product Manager (Microsoft) | @juaneloBalmor

Supporting documents
• Documentation - Getting started with the new Outlook for Windows | aka.ms/AAjkfje
• Issues – office-js issues | https://github.com/officedev/office-js/issues
• Survey - Outlook Add-ins survey | aka.ms/DevNewOutlook
• Documentation - Develop Outlook add-ins for the new Outlook on Windows (preview) | aka.ms/OutlookCOM2WebStatus

Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/community/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/community/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - http://aka.ms/community/home

A

Foreign I'm, a product manager with the Outlook extensibility team and today we'll talk about add-in support for new outlook. So what is new Outlook for Windows? So if this is an initiative where we want to simplify things for customers by unifying our code base and increase engineering, velocity new outlook is essentially overcode in a native frame and the new Outlook for Windows is already available for office insiders. You can check out our public documentation using the link shared here to learn more about it as well.

A

We also look at this as an opportunity to get a consistent experience across platforms. If you look at it today, we have different clients for Outlook, like Windows Web mobile Mac as a long-term Vision. We want to unify the code and ux to have one consistent platform with new outlook.

A

So with that context in place, let's see the add-in support on new Outlook for Windows I'll start with web add-ins and one the next speaker will also talk about the com add-ins.

A

So, firstly, a new outlook is only available for Windows right now. You can use the toggle at the top right corner to move to New Outlook. This means that the current and the new outlook will exist in parallel for now. The good and the big news here is that web add-ins are already available for new outlook and it doesn't require any additional work from Partners. You can start using it today if you have an account with insiders. However, in case in case, you have multiple accounts and Outlook.

A

Web add-ins are currently available only for the primary accounts and it will be disabled. If you move to another account, we expect the full add-in support for secondary accounts to come in by fall of 2023.

A

I like to call out that this is a very good time to test out your add-ins on new outlook, because many of your users will start seeing this toggle. Please reach out to us. If you face any issue while using your add-in using the GitHub link mentioned here in the slide, so yeah with that I'll ask Juan to walk us through an update for com add-ins on new Outlook for Windows.

B

Absolutely thank you very much Nikita, so I have many updates for you, folks, I'm so happy to be here this morning to talk about. You know what the what we are doing for new outlook, but I want to start by kind of I think we shared this this message a long time ago, but I want to share what the new outlook means for Developers for running developers. So my main message for you folks today is that, as Nikita mentioned, the new outlook is based on the it's going to be based on the web client.

B

So so that means that com and bstr add-ins for Outlook are not gonna work. You know in the new outlook, so it's not going to be an option. uh The good news here is well I. Have many good news here is that well, web audits are the future, so many of you have already invested in creating a web add-in and that's great because your add-in should just work uh in the new monarch.

B

So, as Nikita shared, we recently updated the new outlook to support add-ins so make sure to try your add-ins and they should work right now. You know, and if not please please, we want to hear from you. We need our help from our community to to make this a successful transition. Many people ask when is this gonna happen, and the answer to this question is that uh we don't know right, but I want to give you we're giving the clear signal that you know this is going to happen at some moment in time.

B

uh The rollout the rollout to try the previous happening, as you can see today in the preview, builds for real production customers. It's going to start to happen this year. So we look at this as a journey, and uh if you, if you remember that project, we did a few months ago around the new Mac UI for Outlook that preview State there.

B

So we we don't know exactly when this is going to happen, but we are going to make this this transition responsibly, uh making sure that that uh number one in-depth, irrespective of add-ins, that the product itself, uh it's on par with what you can do with the desktop Outlook today right so with that again for adding developers. Now is the right time to engage with us. We are investing. I will share in my next slide, uh so that you can see all the great strides that the team is doing.

B

We know that we there might be some some gaps now that prevent you from moving your existing Outlook commands to web add-ins. So this link, please use this link. uh It will take you to a survey where you can actually contact us and and share. You know the gaps that are present in your audience and and we can start adding them to to our backlog. So, as I said before, so this is a a big slide, a big slide, but I want to share with you. How are we closing these gaps right?

B

We recently posted I posted actually yesterday, for the first time, a page that is going to be very useful for this process and basically this is a live page. If you go to akams, slash, Outlook come to web status, you're going to see a page that is going to give you information about uh what the new outlook means for you, and not only that we will also share the status of different scenarios that can be implemented today.

B

Now, as you can see here in this list, what I'm listing in this table each row represents a scenario. So basically we we have the information about what are the top Commandments that are used out there.

B

uh The millions of users are still using commands, and, and basically we do- we did a classification of those add-ins and we ended up with a list of what are the most popular and Enterprise kind of friendly, because uh there are some add-ins that are in fact Mission critical, as you can see from this list, and there are the most popular ones. No, and this is the list that we ended up with we.

B

We ended up with a bunch of security types of islands, which are by far the most important segment, and you can see a lot of our investments are towards satisfying those scenarios, but we have some reporting. We have online meeting providers, uh we have items that are kind of what they call meeting boosters that are adding additional functionalities to appointments like, for example, uh selecting locations or adding catering services, uh or there are add-ins that provide. You know, capabilities to specify specific lighting or temperature configurations to a meeting room and so on and so forth.

B

This list is basically telling you three things, no number one. What are the scenarios that we are kind of focusing right now? So, if you don't see the scenario you're adding here, I also want to hear from you. You want to make sure that you are covered. Although I I gotta say these settings are very complex, so it's like uh they require a lot of Rich interactions with with Outlook and I believe that by enabling many of these scenarios, I think we're going to enable a big number of other potential scenarios right.

B

Just to give you an idea here: well again, it's telling you what is the scenario more or less a brief description of the scenario. What is the status today? So if you are about to start a journey to create an adding into these types of scenarios, I think, uh as you can see here, with the effort that we've been doing for the last many years, you can actually support multiple of these ones. Right. There are a bunch of smart reporting and education add-ins out there.

B

That doesn't mean that we are not going to investing in those scenarios we there. The scenario is fully supported. We believe that you can create an experience, a super good experience with a web Adin, but we are also adding more even more features to make them even better right. Just to give you one example: we have a many spam reporting Partners, who are there's a consolidation of the spam reporting experience across all the clients today and we're going to provide extensibility points for for to participate in that consolidation project. They require more events.

B

You know, for example, today, if you follow adlo cabins, you will know that we have events that out to launch when you are composing emails or when you are creating new emails or adding recipients, basically in the composition scenario, but not in the reading scenario. So we we require more events for when you are actually reading emails, so uh online meeting providers.

B

You know we recently set out at the outer run capabilities for online signature Partners, but I want to focus the conversation more in the ones that are semi-supported also, which are attachment management types of solutions, uh and in the last column you you will see, features that currently, our team is working on. You know in order to support them uh for detachment management. For example, we have strong feedback that you require to select multiple items. You know you want to upload, for example, a set of items into SharePoint, for instance.

B

uh Well, today that doesn't work with web address. Now you can only select one item at a time, so we are supporting now multi-selection multiple selection, contextless add-ins, which means basically, that your adding can be present even if no items are selected or if you are not in the reading in the reading, you don't have a reading pane active. uh That is very important for certain type of add-ins and again we are right now focusing a lot in security scenarios.

B

So, for example, you will see that for message, encryption scenarios when you encrypt and decrypt email content we're going to be working in some capabilities for, for example, body replacement. Today you can get a long way in these types of scenarios, but the last mile, which is on encrypting the message and showing it in the body of the of the email, is not supported.

B

Also, we are working on a body replacement API, and then we have you know the DLP types of solution, data loss, preventions that requires access to the sensitivity, labels and and many other features right. So that is what I want to share with you is this information is going to be live it's out there. If you go to that link check it out, there are some scenarios that we definitely today we could not support in the way we would love uh like, for example, proofing emails.

B

Now, if you want to you, if you want to provide information, while the user is typing a message or providing kind of Assistance or uh approving capabilities this, this will be super complex to be supported. However, it's also in the backlog So.

B

Eventually, we will have this this type of functionality, so I'm gonna stop there for a second and see if there are any interesting questions here, I see that there's a lot of activity in the chat it includes BBA, yes, BBA is it's also not going to be supported in the new in the new outlook, um not alerts.

B

Yes, uh small alerts, that's cool! uh Okay. How can you contribute if you want to contribute to this with a way to contact? Our team is to use the link that I shared below the AKA Ms Dev new outlook that will open a survey for you that you can we're gonna get some information about your scenario. What are your Target customers? You are able to provide your contact information if you want to share your contact information with us and once you do that we can engage with you and kind of disclose most more closely.

B

You know what uh the plans that we have for a specific scenario and, of course, uh we're open to feedback right now. We need your feedback folks and that and that's it, that's the information that I have for now.

B

The bottom line of my message here is: we know that the new outlook is coming, whether these are going to be the main extensibility option for the new outlook and the team is super committed folks uh to add the richness needed to move your existing investments into web edits and with that I will take it back to you pritika great thanks Juan. That was an awesome presentation, Juana Nikita foreign.