Microsoft 365 Community Office Add-ins, 10 Sep 2021

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From YouTube: Office Add-ins community call – September 2021

Description

This month's community call’s featured presentations - Word API updates (preview of Footnote and Comment APIs for citation management and content insertion), Excel API updates (preview Excel v1.14 API - Worksheet Protection Changed event), Mocking Office.js for unit tests (you are invited to provide feedback around mocking and unit testing with Office.js APIs.) and Community call feedback (live/chat discussion on the merits of this monthly community call). This month’s Community spotlight recognizes MVP Maarten van Stam for his continued contributions. Thank you again! Q&A in chat throughout call. The call was hosted by David Chesnut (Microsoft) | @davidchesnut. Recorded September 8, 2021.

Stay connected:
• See the full blog post for this call at - https://aka.ms/m365pnp/community/blog
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/microsoft365dev
• YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365pnp/videos
• Link to all Microsoft Developer Community calls - https://aka.ms/M365DevCalls
• Submit questions for next community call - https://aka.ms/officeaddinsform
• Next community call – October 13th at 08:00am PDT - https://aka.ms/officeaddinscommunitycall

A

Hello, everyone and welcome to the microsoft office add-ins community call. My name is david chestnut and I'm your host for this call go ahead and take a look at the agenda for today. uh Joining us today is royin liang who's going to be sharing some word. Api updates also, raymond liu is going to be sharing some excel. Api updates and then igor ribeiro is joining us to talk about mocking officejs for unit tests and then I'll be doing a little bit of discussion around your thoughts and feedback on the community call itself.

A

So as we go along, if you have any questions, just type them into the chat and we'll answer those as.

B

A

Go along and if there's any questions we're unable to get to today, we have we post a blog summary of the call, usually about a week after the call and any unanswered questions we follow up in that blog. So with that said, let's go ahead and get started and corying believe you're up. First, if you want to take control.

C

Thank you, david hi, everyone, I'm roy ying, I'm the program manager in office platform team.

C

Today I would like to update some new investment in world api area, as you may know that we've posted the investigative new investigation in for word id for a while during this time we're continuing hearing your feedbacks and the requirements, and we know that there are still strong needs to have to build new features and fulfill new scenarios in world ide. So I'd like to share here that work or are continuing the investment in world adding area um today, I would like to share some new updates.

C

First of all, I want to introduce what targeting scenarios are looking into first one. It's the citation management, so word is crucial for the official and professional documents. We all know that the citation is the is a key for a professional document.

C

We've had a lot of great ideas who can support a great list of parts of scenarios and provide solutions for people to easily manage their citation, so they can add the accurate citation to their document and manage them in future.

C

But now it still have some api gaps for them to uh to support this scenario, and the next one is about the content insertion. So it's works about a lot of different objects.

C

um Apis already support, many of them like the tables table cells, content control, shapes a lot of objects already supported, but still have some gaps so now we're looking into those different objects and trying to support more so. The first api I would like to introduce is about footnote, which is a key asset of the citation um for the footnote api.

C

We will provide the ability to first of all, add edit and delete, and we also can let you to get the footnote from any place you want, and then, with the with that, you can also get the footnotes by the sequence. For example, you can get the next footnote or the first footnote the last of a note, and you can also get it from different object, no matter it's in a table or in a paragraph or in content control.

C

As you know, that footnote has a reference mark in the in the document, so the users can get the footnote from the reference mark and can also get the reference mark from the full note and, as you may know, that the document body actually don't include the footnote part. So currently, if you want to set the selection to the footnote, it's not doable, but with this api you can set the focus focus to for notes directly and then definitely you can set your you can update it.

C

Based on your selection and last but not least, is we support the search function. um Currently, the document test search well, double data search, will search the whole body of the documents, but with this api we will have, we will support to search, including both the main document and the footnotes.

C

This is a list of the objects we support, but for not so you can see that you can see the whole object. Structures are supported for the notes, so you can get through notes from different level and the two note itself will name the ads note item or not for notes, because it will support both footnote and endnote.

C

For the first release, we will only support footnotes, but in future the note item can be either footnotes of all the endnotes and you can get the diff you can get type from the nodeitem.type okay. So this is the footnote api.

C

The next one is about the comment, um the modern comments. Actually, we we have the we have the apis enabled for excel, and now we are introducing this apis to word. The main design are similar, but the way how they will also have some difference.

C

First of all, uh we also is the power to add the comment and add reply or edit or delete, as you may notice that you can only edit your own comments.

C

If from adding is also the same, you can only edit your own comments and cannot edit other people's comments and with the uh and with the delete you can delete a thread or only delete a reply.

C

Besides those actions, you also get the comments, and the word has a new features to support the comments with rich text, so you can also see you can have a structured comments or you can have the url link into in your comments and provide a more reachable experience in your id.

C

These two apis other apis I like to introduce today, will also enabled the bookmark apis in online, as you may know that previously this api has enabled the university too, with the with the new update. We will support it. Also in word online.

C

We have a demo quick demo to show those uh how to use this uh two apis in the station management scenario and the common scenario. So uh you can see uh this. Imagine I'm a student, I'm writing a homework. The teacher asked me to write an article, so I read an article about code, 19 magazines.

C

After I write the main content, I want to add some for note. For some words, I have an id which saves my citations, so you can add the footnote into the document and then you can set focus to check okay. This is the footnote that I want to add and, after I add all the footnotes, I'd like to share the document to my teachers.

C

So, as a teacher, I'm a reviewer, I want to add some comments to my students.

C

I think this is a networking, so I'm in my in my screens also continue loading, but I can continue to explain what the value is doing. It's the idea. The teachers can add the comments into the document and then, after uh after you do that you can also insert the overall summary of the comments and the grades to the students.

C

So this is the whole experience of edit footnotes and the insert comments and get comments. We have a lot of more action support. You can get more details once we have the document released, so I would like to emphasize that the word apis are currently well released to online. First, we will have a requirement set as word api online and those apis will be only available in online at the first release and the full note api and comments api are already in the process of rolling out to beta.

C

So suppose it will be ready in a couple of weeks to you can try it in beta cdn with the preview link. So this is a introduction of the new api and if you have any questions feedback so or thinking of the different scenarios, uh you please feel free to contact me and would like to talk more. Thank you.

A

Thanks back to you well, thank you. That's really awesome. I saw from the comments some people are excited about this. um It looked like there might have been a question or two in there rowing.

C

A

Want to take a look at the web chat.

C

A

We have uh raymond who's going to be chatting about the excel 1.14 preview. Api.

B

Yeah, hello, everyone, this is raymond. uh Let me share my screen so today I would like to introduce the preview api that we're going to release in 1.14, and then I will provide a live demo for the ship. Worksheet, protect change events and we'll show a scenario for that.

B

So the first of all here is the 1.14 api list. That is the candidate that we're gonna release in in this ignite, so which uh it includes auto filter, which you enable you to clear the column criteria and also it allows you to access the you know: a worksheet tab id which is integer id and the wrench president api. uh We have released range to get direct president api, and this one will.

B

uh You can not allow you to get a full president uh ap from this range, and we also gonna, really release chart uh data table api. You can um you can make that a data table uh visible or not visible, and also some other control like a formatting of the of the data table, and we also provide some more like item or non object.

B

This can allow you to get non-object instead of get an error uh exceptional and last one, but not least, is the worksheet protection change events, and I'm gonna talk about this uh today, so yeah for how to preview this api. Actually, um for many of you already know that, but some of the new to js platform, you can uh change that to 1.0 to the beta and also add previews uh to uh to to have the intelligence on your api and uh so for product events.

B

uh The the design is quite a simple um in the worksheet collection, we add a protection protection change hand, event handler and with with the event arcs, the event arcs will include these four things and the type worksheet id and source is is common for all the events and we have the protection boolean value to telling whether a current status, the production status is a is protected or not, and uh so the scenario is I would like to tell uh share.

B

You is is quite uh simple: it's also very useful when you're doing this kind of interaction with the uh with your uh worksheets, for example, um if the planner he wants to do work on very important worksheets, and he won't need you very careful for the anything they want to make and change on the worksheet. So usually he will do is to protect worksheets.

B

You avoid to some unexpected input, so sometimes he forgets to unprotect it and then directly using the ui to do the interaction, but at that time it will uh see the error message, the throw exception and then to handle that uh by the id.

B

But with this event that adding can be the status can be controlled in the event logic, therefore, they can gray out the button. Instead of the you know, end user, uh making making the changes, but without knowing that this is actually not be able to do so.

B

Okay, so uh I will give live demo, but before that this, this is the simple code that you can you use um right now you can use directly in your excel, so let me switch back to my uh excel. um Okay. Here is the simple code, as I just write it and uh which will help me to demonstrate that scenario. So, for example, I'm I'm doing this kind of uh analyze about the the model that our companies sell. So here uh I want to have uh doing some interaction.

B

For example, I I did as a planner, I just protect the sheets and and and then I forget, I protect the sheet and then I doing some. You know changes. For example, I add something and then of course we our api will will throw a exception which is access denied, which is uh annoying here. But you know this is a simple uh demo, but with your complicated demo you a customer may need to do a lot of things and then click uh click the button and then that that will very pretty much annoying.

B

Therefore, uh we we actually doing this to make it possible to that event to handle those um those situations. So I change it to new behavior. So a new behavior is true. Therefore it can control that. Let me let me refresh that.

B

Okay, so let me reduce the events and okay, so uh when I protect events uh protect the current sheet and then they will, uh the events will be fire, and in that events, you can gray out this button, and then user will know that. Okay, what I did that cannot actually you, okay, also gray out this one as well, but it can let indicate the user know that they cannot access.

B

You know insert anything to the worksheet to avoid kind, this kind of arrow. So when you put unprotect when an user and protect the sheets, for example, if I doing uh unprotect sheets.

B

Yeah it can be, it will uh um enable the button. Then you can use it to change the interact with this uh worksheet, so that is, um that is how you use typical use these events in your adding okay, that's all for my of my presentation. Thank you. So much.

A

Thank you. Raymond.

B

A

Yeah very cool to see those api updates coming out. If you have any questions for raymond, go ahead and type them into the chat, and I believe gore is up next.

D

Yeah, hello, everyone, uh I'm igor, I'm currently working for the developer. Experience team for offset-ins and today I'll be talking a little bit about uh mocking of cjs for specifically unit testing of cjs is simply the ofc api in javascript like pretty much for all platforms like major platforms for office and yeah. uh On this, we are planning like to help developers in this process of like mocking officejs foreign testing and like we really want to have your feedback on that.

D

So first, like there are a few questions that I want to ask and like. I really want your feedback on this, so this is relating to your experience with unit tests with office.js apis. uh So, like feel free to answer in the chat or later, I will send some link first to continue the conversation.

D

um So first, it's like did you face any difficulties while dealing with mocking of the js api? um Remember you know office.js api is our javascript api for offs, so like you're having difficulty while you're testing, if it like, have you ever tried and like? Oh, this is the problem that I face.

D

You currently use uh office.js api with unix testing, and this is what you find hard about it so yes feel free to answer in the sheds uh like, even if I don't read it out loud, your answer like I've, surely really read all the feedback so like please feel free to right there.

D

The second question is like what you'd like to help easier: the unit's test experience so like you really need like something from microsoft like oh, we need to do something to make your experience easier or like. Oh, we really. If we had that, then our experience would be great, so yeah. This is just like really ask for features like any suggestions like this is very early on so like.

D

Please really share any suggestions that you might have, and the next question is just like what are some pain points that you are facing so like these are like the key problems that I'm facing, while using testing so like. I really cannot even test because, because of x, like I already tried and like this, took out way too long time and like I cannot deal with it or like yeah, I'm already testing like this is too hard so, like I just thought to not test it or like to just leave it out so yeah.

D

This is like what you you really feel is the main problem that we need to face yeah feel free to insert on the chat.

D

Next, I just want to like talk a little bit of an overview of what we, what we couldn't understand of our unit test with of cjs, so first a problem that we have and like I I try like. I really solve all those problems in real person. um The first is, there is no documentational model to have developed sims tests and mock our office.js api and there's not only on the official docs.

D

That's pretty much not anywhere like there's no threads or like stack overflow or something of people discussing about it, so you're pretty much in the dart on how to test it, which is bad other than that likings testing of jss, normally harder than other apis, uh and I'm going to list some problems that I have faced so first, like you actually need to load the api with an html file to actually access it completely.

D

This makes sense for like production and development experiences because, like you, really need to load your add-ins so like in html, so there's no problem in mates on a testing perspective, it's really bad! You have to have an html just to be able to access the api, because, like this will take some time to set up and like it's just more hassle like more problems can occur if you need to do more things than needed.

D

The second problem is that some test apis require you to mock all properties of a class. So, for example, if you are using some public testing api like sign or guest, they may require you to mark all the functions of a class which, in office.js case like can have more than 100 properties. Even though, like you, are only using two functions and you only care about two functions, you may have to mark all of them.

D

It's like more than 100 and it's not feasible, and the other problem that I faced is that sometimes it's necessary to account for loads and contact sync functions which are very common on the code like to load properties and like to sync, then with the offs platform, and it's really necessary for you to test where they are like when they are called, and this is something hard to do with normal units, testing, apis and yeah, like we really plan on delivering our solutions to help elevate your problems. That's why I'm asking those questions so yeah.

D

We really want to help your experience in this so like please like help us to share what you have. And lastly, it's just like a cultural action. Like uh I created this microsoft tech community link. It's just like for you we to continue this conversation, like I saw that you already have like some comments here and like sorry for not reading at all like, but be sure that I will read all of them like if you want to write a better solu.

D

A more bigger comment, like with more context like feel free to write it later or here like. I will read it all, and this is just a place that I created for us to continue the conversation like I'll, be reading it uh and we, as developers, will be seeing it for getting feedback, and we will answer it so like. Please feel free to see this link like share your stories, share your feedback, anything that you might be developing or have tried.

D

We are really glad, like you, have your support on it and yeah thanks all for like your time and like for letting us start. This conversation and yeah like now back to david.

A

Thanks igor yeah, I see a few folks in in the chat are excited to see the conversation about this yeah. So that's great, I guess sounds like folks should go just click the link there and they can go continue, providing feedback about mocking and unit testing, which would be great. I know it's been an old request because I'm personally on a couple of github threads, where folks have been asking for more help around unit testing, as well as like automation, testing too.

A

So this is very cool thanks for that, so transitioning a bit here to community call feedback. I kind of wanted to just chat about the community call for a second. While we have everyone's attention, um so the office add-ins community calls been around for a little over two years now uh started. I think I believe our first call was april. 11Th 2018 we've had 34 calls since then, and it's grown to about a hundred attendees per call, which is pretty good, and uh you know for folks that have been regular, attendees you've.

A

Seen that we have a you know, fairly consistent types of content. You know we have preview announcements to say: hey this api is going to preview. uh We occasionally have guest presenters showing how they build solutions with office add-ins apis.

A

We also have demos that we do around features and code samples, uh as well as the q, a section which will be coming up right after this segment, so we're kind of curious to get some feedback about how things are going with the office adams community call- and so I just want to ask a couple of questions and ask people just kind of type in the chat and just see what you think and to kind of help us.

A

You know we're thinking about the direction of the community call and what things we want to do down the road. So it's really good to get your perspective and the first question is you know why do you attend the community? Call? You know it's definitely.

A

You know it takes about an hour of your time to attend and get information, and you know it's that's very valuable to you and we appreciate when folks show up but we're just kind of curious. I mean obviously there's lots of sources of information. You know you can go to youtube to watch videos of features you can use the docs there's code samples you know. So what is it about? The community call itself that makes you show up.

A

I tend to see what direction officejs is going. We are in active development of word add-ins like see behind the curtain, okay, so kind of like looking for a road map kind of getting an early look at things that are coming down down the road. Another comment on instant preview apis. Thank you for that. I'm here to learn where microsoft is headed and see what level support responsiveness is available. Okay, it's good to know thanks for that, uh informs me of upcoming functionality.

A

Good to know thanks attend the community calls to see what others are doing with office and sharepoint.

A

Okay, thanks for that, that's good to know um best practices, roadmap, news, feedback from implementation for customers use case. It's good to know thanks getting an early look at what's coming and chance to hear directly from the developers.

A

Thanks for that feedback yeah, we try to have the folks from the team on the calls to help answer with questions and such a joy to learn about new outlook, api developments and improvements for my team. It's also a great priority lane to get answers straight from the source. Okay, thanks. That's a so connecting with the team uh first time attending working a word add-in to interact with word online, trying to overcome some of the missing functionality.

A

Okay, so looking for information thanks for that main reason is to get an update on the apis. Okay, enjoy the live demos and code samples, an opportunity to ask questions if needed.

A

Thanks, that's good to know current spfx developer, looking to expand skills to office; okay, that's interesting and crossing over technologies. There, news temples! Everything is super thanks bit to see dev directions and be able to act in time. All right, thanks uh community call usually has the latest information on new apis and plans for release. This is very important to us.

A

Thanks daniel, I tend to get the latest information watch code, demos and the opportunity to interact with the office development community. Okay, good to know thanks: this is my first community call just wondering what it was all about. Thanks erica, uh it's always good to show up out of curiosity, and hopefully it's helpful to you, get quick answers to questions thanks to connect with like-minded developers and help shape the platform with feedback based on experience and get information on important api changes.

A

Thanks eric to stay on the cutting edge to help steer my customers in good directions, I tend to see what is coming up, see what other people are doing and keep in touch with the direction of the apis.

A

Thank you. This is my first community call. I started using officejs this summer and I'm currently interested in learning the direction word apis are heading would be nice to have better communication in terms of what's being worked on and timelines. Okay good to know. Thank you for that uh to see what others are doing for future innovative ideas and features.

A

Thank you. It's just a great preview of what is in store for off65 add-ins cool thanks office is crucial for our work, so any info related office and its add-ins to add efficiency. To work is a benefit thanks. Look for news on word: add-in, development. Okay, thank you, understanding on how to use the office products better from a user or business use case perspective, okay, good, to know ability to see how to modify the add-ins available and apply them all right. Thank you. Best practices and api updates are also important.

A

I'm in the process of developing the first office gs admin from organization. I would love to have some workshop sessions. Oh thanks for that very interesting, um and is there a similar group for connecting with the team responsible for the office word online development? Well, this would be the group we do. Office add-ins are for online in office, unless maybe I'm not quite understanding the question but yeah this would be the team, okay, so kind of a follow-up question. To that.

A

Is there any information you feel like you're, not getting from the call that you would like to see? It's a word web app specifically, so I wanted to see more information on word. I assume add-ins the the office add-ins in word, so I would love to see a host by host api development status. Update.

A

Oh, very interesting request, thanks brandon future plans for enabling spfx development of office add-ins, okay, interesting thanks for that, maybe best practices and deep dive topics. Okay, thanks, vet very very interesting feedback. This is that's making me think here, um word excel powerpoint, etc. Okay, oh that's! A follow-up!

A

uh The host by host okay gotcha um excel enhancements that are coming not necessarily related to add-ins.

A

Oh, is that more like end user excel, like maybe there's a new, uh I don't know feature that's gonna appear in the menu or something if there's no new info for the other office. App apis maybe include a quick summary of what was covered in previous sessions or provide a teaser of what's coming in future sessions. What is actively being worked on that may be a future critical update.

A

Okay, thanks for that sort of a building more of a connection between calls, it sounds like yes, the word web app has some serious deficiency in terms of functionality. Okay, got it specifically around content, controls other than rich text and forms. It would be nice to have a timeline when other types of controls, like date, checkbox, might be supported.

A

Okay, thanks for that feedback, that's good to know. um It would be nice to have a roadmap posted some, since some of us are here to get a preview of the future releases. This could be useful yeah. It's a great request. I will pass that along to the team. One thing I would like to know is what the call has at the high level beforehand, while the excel and outlook updates are great. They don't necessarily apply to me. I'm sure the outlook and excel folks sometimes feel the same word yeah.

A

That's uh some good feedback there it's interesting, because we usually do a tweet about the agenda a day or two before the call. That's usually when we get the agenda finalized, so it sounds like.

A

Maybe it would be useful to have an agenda earlier than that, if possible, that's kind of what I'm reading from that registering, deploying and managing add-ins. Okay, more demos on office online. Okay, that's an interesting request. Russell is that, as opposed to office on the desktop office on the mac in general, things should work cross platform subs. It's just kind of wondering. If there's more to that question.

E

Hi david, um just because the functionality online is different and a lot of the reason. The big push for people moving to office 365 is to leverage the online platform.

A

Right, okay, so would it like an example would be like if we're showing a demo of a feature like we would show that in office online.

E

Yes, as opposed to the desktop, only just to try and push people more to online and to get them to appreciate that everything does work online and, let's just say: okay, you know the the desktop is not the only option now.

A

Yeah, okay, yeah. That makes sense all right. Thanks for the feedback, let's see, I would like to see how the items work with the power platform better without needing to deploy it infrastructure, but just write the code and run okay, good feedback, debugging add-in issues from end user support, point of view: yeah, that's a great request. um I've seen debugging requests come up in the past. Now it's like a popular area for for seeing more info.

A

uh What account does that? Come from right? I'm missing some context on that one, especially issues occurring locally. That cannot be tracked for your own back end soon. This is more debugging. Okay got it. Let's see I'd like to see so I'll try to come back to it. I'd like to see more information about uh plans for parity between office scripts and excel javascript api and integration points with citizen developer products such as power, automate power, apps and power, bi, okay, great feedback. A great previous comment would be great.

A

If you publish the agenda for the call in advance of the call, even 24 hours would be helpful. Oh that's the twitter! That was the question about twitter uh yeah. So it goes. There is a microsoft, 365 developer twitter account, I'd have to I'll have to get the actual address for it and post it here.

A

I'll put it in the summary blog too. So if you follow up on the blog, you can find the link to it. I agree online does not always work like desktop. Yes, uh cannons for mobile version.

A

Okay, you mentioned that the schedule was supposed to twitter a few days in advance. What twitter is yeah I'll, find that and post I'll post that twitter handle in the blog post? That's maybe one of the pms on the call might happen to have a handy um all right. So a next question, so you may have seen this slide on a previous community call. This is some information that came out back around the june time frame starting in september, which is this month.

A

uh Microsoft, 365 is moving to a new call format, so the old formats on the left side of this slide, where we have sort of I guess you described as kind of a siloed uh community call format where everybody kind of has their own community calls. There's one for microsoft, graph, there's one for sharepoint, there's one for teams and of course we have office add-ins on the wednesday slot there and they're kind of at different times scattered throughout the month.

A

So the goal moving forward is try to simplify things and make it easier for folks, so that there's always you know same time of the week same day, kind of thing so tuesdays, basically at eight a.m, become a microsoft, 365 engineering call which would be.

A

You could think of that as where the like, the pms are rolling out. Some features or preview kinds of information, and then thursday at 7 00 am would be more community focused. So that's where you'd probably see code sample demos or guest presenters, or that kind of thing at least that's the idea.

A

Also it would be a microsoft 365 all up. So every call is about something in the microsoft 365 ecosystem, so it could be office add-ins, it could be microsoft teams, it could be. You know, sharepoint and the idea is to you know, tell a better story about you know this is microsoft 365 this isn't necessarily always working in one specific thing, and I personally experienced this you know, and so occasionally I'll do a demo like on the last month.

A

I was doing a demo of showing how to open data from your website into microsoft teams and create a spreadsheet and put your excel add-in into it, and all the technologies used in that were microsoft, graph and microsoft teams and then office add-ins, and so you know it's not always just about office add-ins or just about sharepoint and so on.

A

So the idea is to make this more consistent and also fit better with microsoft, 65 technology story we're looking at going to this format uh with office add-ins, I believe, like microsoft, graph, sharepoint and teams are already in this call format. There might be a few others in there we're considering going to this, and so I just wanted to ask you know for folks attending this call.

A

What's your perspective on this change? Is this? uh Do you see benefits to doing this? Like? Is this going to be helpful to you are you concerned there might be.

A

This might make it more difficult to get the information you're after and be clear, I'm not asking for like a yes, no vote, I'm really just looking for information about like how would this how this would affect you in a beneficial or not so beneficial way, so yeah give us some feedback on that. Basically, the question is: what are your thoughts on this change over to the chat here?

A

Okay, I see brandon says: can we join the microsoft 365 engineering call, so I'm guessing you view that as a beneficial change, we should move office headings into that direction.

A

um Be great to know if you have something specific about what why you'd like to see that like the new layout, I assume that's the new microsoft 365 call layout, uh much clearer in layout and reserving time to the collins, pierre, okay, thanks for letting us know it's, okay, as long as we know in advance what is happening on any given tuesday.

A

Oh, it sounds like you you're not like. Maybe you want to see like a page somewhere, that's showing what the upcoming agenda is. Instead of twitter, that's josh! That's kind of what I'm reading from that.

A

So I prefer the once a month for office, add-ins, okay, it's good to know jacob, but if you could give us any more information about why that is like, maybe you only work with office add-ins, and so that's all you want to see. I don't know, but it would help if we have more about your perspective if it means less office ad and specific content. Overall, I don't like it if it's the same or more, that's great. um Okay, that's good feedback.

A

um Ideally it'd be the same content, but it'd probably just be distributed uh so like at least I'm just saying like what what the plan would be. If we go to this format, it'd be like one call might have a 15-minute demo on something that's sort of centered in teams and then it might go to something: that's more centered in office add-ins, so you could think of and then maybe the next week there's another office add-ins thing kind of mixed in with some other microsoft 365 areas.

A

So that's the part. So you know let us know what you think about that. I like the new format, but it would be helpful to know in advance by do2 what topics or api areas will be covered if you're interested in most of the api areas, but some more than others. Okay, it's good to know. I mostly focus on outlook add-ins, so the current call structure would work better.

A

Okay, that's good to know so that sounds like uh you are in that case, where this is a specific thing: you're interested in you're, not really looking at the other technologies across microsoft 365. So that's good to know. I think the engineering call would be useful if it is focused on road map and new api office functionality.

A

Okay, that makes sense. I think the number one thing I'm going to take away today is roadmap. I like it, but don't let office add-ins, get lost under the pile of innovations and all the other products. Okay, good feedback.

A

Yeah there is there's always a ton of stuff going on across microsoft, 365. roadmap, again roadmap star any yammer feed. We could subscribe. Oh interesting, I'm not aware of one, but that's maybe something to think about a clear agenda would be important, okay and so twice a week instead of once a month.

A

I think communicating the agenda ahead of time would be crucial. Okay, good to know, mip sets up the yammer feed and it would send the notification on what is the agenda and link to join. Okay sounds like I'm not familiar with the mip acronym, so we need to know what that is.

A

uh We currently do only work with office add-ins. I also find it easier to find an hour once a month and an hour once a week for something that might not apply even in the same realm.

A

Okay, that's good to know, so that's another case where you're specifically focusing off that ends and a single call would work better for you. uh Personally, I, like the once a month call knowing that the entire call is dedicated off settings. I primarily work with office buttons, so that is really what I'm interested in that way. I spend less time in meetings over the course of the month. If you switch twice a week, calls knowing the agenda day ahead. Second term, which calls through 10, would be very helpful.

A

Trying to keep my calendar flexible, to be able to attend an extra two meetings. Each week will be a challenge. Okay, that makes sense. It sounds like a similar case where the the single call works better for your schedule, just because that's the main info you're interested in it's about office add-ins, but each of the m3 subscribe calls have a theme um I just have to say community calls. I mean well the plan not at this time, they're. Really it's just uh it's kind of whatever shows up on the agenda.

A

I mean there might be a part we could, if you think there should be some kind of theme that might be interesting to look at, but right now, that's it's really. Just the theme is community, which means it could be a demo about any technology or guest presenter about any technology.

A

I'm only interested in specifically powerpoint office, add-in, okay and maybe powerpoint vsto with interop or vsto interop. Okay, oh the microsoft information protection group. Okay, I like the new ms365 approach, seems that changes always hit more than one product, so agenda with what is coming up in three 15 minute: demos, with possibly an open question forum after would be good. Okay thanks, one meeting a month is better for me: okay, good to know one last quick question just checking. If there's.

C

A

Forms or formats you'd like to see community involvement like a while back, I seek in what if we moved our q a to like a reddit, ask me anything like maybe travel once a month on that, and I got to thinking. Are there other things we should be looking at, like I saw yammer kind of popped up here a second ago? Is that something we should be thinking about kind of a pretty open question? I'm not sure I'm just kind of curious like where folks are out looking for information.

A

If there's, maybe something in addition to the community call, we should be doing or looking at changes. So I see russell's asking. Would the engineering call potentially include typescript and react stuff uh yeah it could. I guess it just depends on. What's being shown, uh I mean a lot of times if a feature is being shown how to use the future, it might be shown in the perspective of typescript or react um so that could certainly be the case see eric is sharing a document on the requirement sets thanks for that eric see.

A

uh We have a yes for reddit. I'd like to uh ask me anything I need to know we thought the word. Api was no longer under development, so this meeting and showing us what is coming is enough, but I wouldn't say no to a subreddit with more community involvement from microsoft prefer reddit over twitter. Okay, thanks jacob, it's good to know this channel 9 used or updated much.

A

um I know from office add-ins we're not really using channel 9, but is that something you would want to see.

E

Hi david, um just a curiosity question because I know there was quite a lot of stuff on there a few years ago with new features and stuff coming out, but it's there's not so much anymore. I just thought wondered if that was. I mean it's quite active with other stuff, but not so much office. Add-Ins.

A

Yeah, it's true, I'm I'm not sure like, like we've been posting like these community calls to youtube, as well as like individual demos and stuff, and I've just been kind of following that sort of what marketing has been doing. I've never really asked about like. Is there a reason we do that and not channel nine. So I mean I have to ask them, but I mean I would be curious to know like if you want to see content on channel nine, that's good to know.

E

Not particularly, but it's just another place to where there might be content.

A

Yeah, it's true it I, as far as I know, there's I mean like for office add-ins. I know we're not putting anything on channel nine. I I can't I wanna be careful about speaking about all the other microsoft subscribe areas, because I don't know if somebody might actually be publishing the channel line, because it's yeah.

E

I think your engineering call weekly does make a lot of sense because it might consolidate a lot of different channels and places where people are putting content. So it might centralize things a bit better.

A

Yeah, that's true yeah. We would prefer to avoid having lots of locations where the content gets scattered and then so you might miss something because you're looking at you know say channel nine, but not at youtube. um So it's better if we can consolidate it.

A

Oh, I see uh dalen's asking where the recordings posted there's a link right at the end of the slide deck that we'll have show you, where they're going there's a microsoft, useless, 5 community channel on youtube, that's where they all get posted, um so we have about five minutes left, so I need to move on. So I just want to thank everybody for the feedback. uh Super appreciate all this feedback. It's very helpful for helping us think about the call format going forward.

A

What we want to do- and you know how things might affect you so thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that and moving along, I want to say thank you to martin van stamm, uh mvp who's been helping on the pnp office, add-ins repo, with uh reviewing prs and such so it's much appreciated.

A

I also want to mention there is a recognition program on pnp and you can get your own badge if you are a contributor. You know in the interest of promoting more participation on the pnp office, add-ins or even our doc repos for that matter. If you go help submit a pr or review a pr, you know you can get your own badge for being a community contributor. So if you go to that link there on recognition program that has the details about, you know how to qualify for it and how to get it.

A

So, if you're interested please check that out and then I just want to follow up in the q a we had. A couple of questions come in on the form, so we had one question that said back in office, add-ins community call back in march. You revealed that admin deployed add-ins would be automatically pinned to the ribbon in web outlook starting in april.

A

So we have many customers, who've already deployed our ad in before that date, but would now like to have it auto-pinned. However, in our internal testing and testing to my customers, redeployed add-ins are not automatically pinned in web outlook. In addition to lack of auto, pinning we're, naturally not seeing the match notification.

A

So I checked with the outlook team. They said it looks like there might be a bug there. So if you could create an issue at the link there on office, dev office dash js issues and just give us some information on how to re-throw it if we could reproduce on our end, we can dig into that more so just go out there and let us know and another question that just came in yesterday so sso and an add-in in word in teams on desktop works.

A

If the word file opens from the files position, however, the same file is open via assignments, sso stops working additionally in assignment the dialogue, opens the browser from outside team's desktop and then there's no communication between the browser and the add-in and how to deal with such a situation.

A

So one thing is, I should mention is that sso is not supported when teams is the host? That's something we're hoping to put out as a feature soon we might have an update on a future community call. So in those cases you need to use a fallback dialogue, but I'm also going to check with the team I haven't had a chance to check in with the folks working on sso stuff.

A

Just I want to double check that and also double check the browser popping up outside so uh I'll follow up with some more info in the summary blog post there as well, and then just wrapping things up. If you're new to office add-ins, there's some links here to go check out uh documentation for getting started. We have these five-minute quick starts that help you get going quickly and just check out the code and see how an add-in runs.

A

We also have developer resources for the microsoft 365 developer program, which gives you a free tenant for developing and testing, which is really great. You can also try out script lab which helps you test code without necessarily having to build a project in the context of the host like excel.

A

If you have any technical questions, there's a link here to go: ask questions on our q a form.

A

You can also ask on stack overflow, there's a link there with the tags you can use for that and then there's also, if you find any bugs in the product, go to that office-js link and you can let us know there and let's know how to re-throw it we'll look into it and if you have future requests or ideas, go to the m365 dev suggestions link, you can always send a smile or a frown and here's the link.

A

This will take you to that microsoft, 65, community, youtube channel that folks are asking about where this is, where we post all the recordings, as well as the demos afterwards, you can also follow us on twitter. There's the twitter randle at microsoft, 365 dev, that's where we post the agendas shortly before each call, so the next call will be october. 13Th at 8 a.m: civic daylight time and there's the link there.

A

If you don't already have the invite to the office, add-ins community call and if you have a question ahead of time, let us know on the forum, there's a forum you can fill out with the question at aka dot, ms slash office, add-ins form and then we'll bring those up in the next call, so we're at the top of the hour thanks everybody for attending really appreciate all the feedback, and we will see you on the next call.