Microsoft 365 Community Office Add-ins, 9 Mar 2022

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Office Add-ins community call – March 2022

Description

This month's community call features updates on Excel API 1.15 preview (accessing and using Chart Series Dimension and Pivot Table Data Source APIs) - Sirui Sun (Microsoft) and Q&A both at end of call and in chat throughout call. The call was hosted by Alex Jerabek (Microsoft). Recorded March 9, 2022.

Stay connected – (all groups) (Blog and YouTube posts)
• See the full blog post for this call in the Microsoft 365 platform community blog - https://aka.ms/m365pnp/blog
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/microsoft365dev
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365/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 – April 13th at 08:00am PST - https://aka.ms/officeaddinscommunitycall

A

Welcome to the microsoft office, add-ins community call it is 8 a.m march, 9th here in overcast redmond, so welcome everyone for joining us. My name is alex drobik I'll, be hosting today's call. If you have any questions, please please please drop them in the chat. We have members of the product team here uh ready to help answer you. If your questions do not get answered during this call, we will be posting the answers in our follow up blog post on the m365 developer, blog all right.

A

So today, on our call, we have an update on the excel api 1.15 requirement set. These slides were done by our software engineer on the excel api side. Siri sun, although she could not make it today so I'll, be presenting on her behalf.

A

So one of the themes of excel 1.15 is this idea of bi-directional discovery, so we're adding more apis to enable your add-ins to discover the source of data, so we see like in pivot table you can get where the data generating that pivot table is coming from and what type of thing whether it's a range or table, or what have you we're? Also expanding the work that was done with range to add in the git dependence api.

A

So now from a single cell, you can see what other cells it affects, and so this is all really building out those scenarios around. You know transferring data from you know web service and getting it back into the source of the workbook and back and forth there.

A

We also have a couple more apis around shape and table. These are based on customer requests. Remember we have our m365 developer suggestions, which I think was linked earlier, but we will have links to later in the presentation where you can request features. We do look at that to help prioritize new additions to the api surface.

A

So how do you use these new apis while they're in preview? First, you need to change your cdn reference from 1.1 to beta, so this will get you the new stuff and then, if you want intellisense reference, the at types at office.js preview and this screenshot is from script lab.

A

So you can use these day in script, lab and test that out there just doing a little bit of a deeper dive into these uh dimension data source apis or data source, apis, there's a set of two there's the get the string and get the type, and this will let you get the address or table name or other label of the data source as well as the type, so your adding can act appropriately. So for the chart series here, you can get see if it's a local range or a list and then act accordingly.

A

Based on that information, we have some sample code here. If you're unable to type this very fast, we will be posting these slides afterwards, in the blog summary, we'll also be adding script lab samples for all this stuff over the coming weeks.

A

So please, let us know if there are particular scenarios, you're curious about or challenges you have, while testing these out yourself, we're also adding the pivot table data source, apis very similar to the chart series uh string and the type. So you can figure out if that pivot table is generated from a table or a range and see that address of it address or table name and again act accordingly and some source code there we're gonna, do a little demo of these apis prepared by uh siri.

A

Now I'm gonna play a video on the next slide, so there's a little music make sure your speakers are adjusted accordingly again, if you are unable to see the video we'll be posting all this later, so don't fret too much all right with that. Let's play this little demo.

A

A

All right cool, and that is the update on excel 1.15. So now we're going to go to the q. A these questions were submitted ahead of time through uh our question form which we'll link to in a little bit and as well as we'll go over some of the questions. They've been popping up in the chat, so the first question was: when can we expect the get selected data async functionality to be applied for shapes in a powerpoint presentation?

A

Currently there's no near-term plan to enable that support, but, like I mentioned earlier, we have our m365 developer suggestions where you can post your feature, requests or upvote ones and that'll help us prioritize things. Then. Our second question was around outlook. Integrations this customer found that their outlook integration broke because of some changes. That happened um and they were wanting to know if there's advanced notice about these, so that they avoid the the friction caused by downtime and so first like we want to apologize for that.

A

We try our best to communicate these and to avoid any breaking changes. So I think if these are happening and you're not aware of it, we need to know about that communication breakdown. So please, let us know there are people on this call who would love to to hear about your problems and help proactively solve them, but as part of a larger picture, we are trying to align to the m365 roadmap and to better communicate upcoming changes uh and feature additions to our developer audience.

A

So I saw there was a question in the chat about kind of having that roadmap, so we will be striving to post new stuff when we are more certain about the dates that are coming out on that I realize that it's a bit of a meme, we always say like. We can't tell you a release date yet soon or eventually, but the roadmap will be a place where we can communicate our expected dates, assuming nothing goes awry and then we'll be better able to give you an anticipation of what is coming forward.

A

So let us know, as we start to roll this out, how that is working for you. If there's enough information there, if we're still missing important feature, updates or other changes, that you would love to be aware of so and as always, you know, we welcome questions here, we'll try to announce new, exciting things on the call.

A

We also have our github repos, where you can report issues and members of our team regularly check, stack, overflow and other places for other questions and issues all right, juan was there anything in the chat you'd like to kind of address for the group.

B

uh Well, I actually was answering a question here about from brandon that we should be a visibility, not something related to this topic. uh Yeah, we're obviously welcome suggestions here. I think uh we're trying to do many things for for you folks. This call is one example of we always talk about what's coming here.

B

We have a preview program, so we never ship something out of the blue. We always simulate in preview for for many months, uh so you guys can play with it. Give us feedback help us make it more stable and stuff like that, and we have a requirement sets page that that actually has a.

A

B

On what's supported in what platform and what builds and etc, and also we know that that's not always enough, so we're also planning to to be on the roadmap on the public roadmap, so we're gonna start we're gonna, experiment and see you know uh if publishing in our in the office 365 roadmap is is also helpful, but we are always open to suggestions now. So if you have anything that we can do to improve, just do let us know please uh so that we can actually do it.

B

You know at the end of the day you are our community, so we want to make sure that you guys have clarity on on what's in preview, what's coming and in what platforms, so the roadmap will be awesome: okay, brandon we're going to publish it there.

B

uh They should so there's a question also from lynn around course replacement. Yes, we're lin we're working on that blog uh currently, so I I hopefully we will. We will release it soon. This is the bug that is moving the cursor and outlook signature insertion set, select data, yes, and that's, I think, that's uh what I can see now.

A

Alex awesome, thank you, one, oh, and to russell's question about. Where should questions and and stuff be posted I'll get to that in a second in the slide? It's just as we wrap up if you're listening this call and you're new to office add-ins and want to try them out. We have a series of quick starts that'll, get you a working add-in within five minutes. You can also use script lab to explore the individual apis and see them working directly with a workbook or powerpoint presentation or word document.

A

Also, if you're looking to automate excel tasks in more, you know lighter you know, code, like fashion, we have office scripts. You can check those out to get some web-based automation solutions there.

A

Now, as far as resources go, uh the question was: where should we post questions to microsoft, q, a or stack, overflow or github- and I mean we check all of those github- is the best place to post bugs or other issues like that um that helps us kind of categorize it and triage it and have a response to and understand how we're going to address it and communicate it for developer questions stack. Overflow is a great place to get help from the community, as well as our our team and then yeah.

A

We are recently joining the uh microsoft q, a and checking stuff out there. We do look at those questions every week, so please, you know, yeah keep posting. Let us know if you feel your stuff is not getting answered and we will make more of an effort to get out there and to address issues if you're interested in other m365 development. uh Other things in the platform we have several calls. This call is just one in a larger series of community calls.

A

You can find all the links here again, if you don't have time to copy all this down, we'll be posting. These slides later in the m365 developer blog. Thank you very much. We'll have this recording up shortly in our blog and on youtube later. The next call will be april 13th at 8am, civic, daily time and yeah. Thank you. So much. If you have any questions, please we'll stay in the chat for a while, we'll keep answering them talking as long as you need, but as far as the call portion uh that'll be it.

A

Thank you very much and have a great rest of your day. Everyone.

B