Microsoft 365 Community Office Add-ins, 12 Apr 2023

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From YouTube: Office Add-ins community call – April 2023

Description

This month's community call topics: Word Extensibility Update – April 2023 - Yun Wang, Principal Product Manager (Microsoft) and Top 5 AppSource Validation Errors (December 2022-February 2023) - Elizabeth Samuel, Senior Technical Writer (Microsoft).

As well, five questions are formally addressed in this month’s Q&A, other questions were addressed in chat throughout call.

The call was hosted by Preethika Kiruveedula (Microsoft). Recorded on April 12, 2023.

Agenda
00:00 – Intro
00:46 – Topic - Word Extensibility Update – April 2023 - Yun Wang, Principal Product Manager (Microsoft)
11:13 – Topic - Top 5 AppSource Validation Errors (December 2022-February 2023) - Elizabeth Samuel, Senior Technical Writer (Microsoft)
20:00 – Q&A – Preethika Kiruveedula, Product Manager (Microsoft)
24:37 – Resources
25:33 – Closing

Stay connected
• See the full blog post for this call in the Microsoft 365 platform community blog - https://aka.ms/community/blog
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/microsoft365dev
• 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
• Link to all Microsoft Developer Community calls - https://aka.ms/M365DevCalls
• Submit questions for next community call - https://aka.ms/officeaddinsform
• Next community call – May 10th at 08:00am PT - https://aka.ms/officeaddinscommunitycall

A

A

I'm gonna go ahead and get started for today's Community call good morning or good evening, depending on your time zone. Thanks for joining. Today it is the April 12th office, Adams Community call. My name is pritika I'm a PM at Microsoft and I'll be hosting the call today. So our two topics on the agenda will be a few updates on word extensibility and we'll also be going over top five appsource validation errors, ranging from December of 2022 till February of 2023..

A

So our presenters of the day will be Wang, Yoon who's, a principal product manager at Microsoft and Elizabeth Samuel. Who is a senior technical writer also at Microsoft? All right did you want to take over.

B

Thanks very much today, I will give you some updates about the results of our previous award accessibility surveys. Several months ago, we actually asked for your inputs for two surveys. One is the survey about structure document, content usage in word, events and another survey about the auto launch for word add-ins. So today, I will give you some updates for the results and some insights. So the first one is the structure document content usage, inverter edits.

B

We got responses from 32 companies in our organizations there, and the survey is mainly asking for inputs related to content, controls and Fields related requirements. So I pick it up some important ones here. The first one is the content, control types that you are using and you are expecting to have API support. As you could see from this picture, we got rich text and print text as the top two, and we also have check box and drop down list there in a third and fourth place in past several months.

B

We had some investment in this area and now, if you go to the preview requirement set of word API, you could find the plain text. Content control API Support over there. So now we support both the rich text and plain text apis for you, so this is for Content controls and looking forward so the the third place in the first place. We are evaluating them, especially uh how we can enable them on word online and, finally, how we can support for these apis across platforms. We'll give another updates.

B

Once we have progress on these next one is about the fields. I talked about the fields support the last Community call that uh you know we started to support more field types and we fully support the operations for these types, which means that the Leisure field, creation, deletion, updating, Sketcher, etc for some specific types of the fields. All these operations are supported. So from this survey you can see that we have top four types listed over there like date, like hyperlink Etc.

B

So now, if you go to the preview API requirement set, you will notice that we supported add-in type date, the hyperlink and Toc field types over there. So you could still do some reads for other field types, but for these four types, specifically, you can do all the operations against them, both for word online and word desktop later on. We will release or GA these apis into production.

B

Next, one related to content control events. We added several new events into the preview requirement sets now. So if we take a look at the survey here, we get top ones like content, control, added data, changed deleted or selected and changed I'll enter exit. So these ones are what we currently supported in preview requirement set and again they will be create quite soon in the coming months, and we still have several listed there.

B

For example, the content control on copy and un paste Etc, so I would encourage you to try out the existing ones in the preview first and see whether these events can you know either fulfill all your requirements. Or can you know you can walk around your scenarios with these apis if you want to use something like on copy or on paste, so these are for Content control events.

B

So these are the updates for the survey for structured document content. Next, one is related to uh survey about adding out of launch. We got like responses from 35 companies and organizations, so we asked several questions over there. Let's review them. The first question will be asked is, what's your understanding of Auto launch for adding? Basically, we want to understand whether you want to automatically launch the add-in per document per specific document, or per user or per you know, or for any documents, so it will take like look at the survey results here.

B

Most of the users require the auto launch to be enabled for every document. So no matter, you know you want to Auto launch and do it auto, install and then Auto launch the add-in or you just want to Auto launch the add-in when it is installed previously see. In both cases you actually need to people are requiring they are to open for every document there.

B

So this is the first one. The the second one is the user scenarios. So there are several interesting points there, uh so I think the top voted. One is that people want to Auto launch and add in if it is not closed last time, so, for example, if an add-in is opened by a user for some document last time, then, if the user closed that document without closing the add-in the next time he launches the document or launches any document, then the add-in should be opened automatically and remember.

B

You know the history of the open activities of that add-in. So this is the first required scenario and we also have one in the shared scenario. For example, in many Industries take legal industry as an example, people send over the contract via email. So when people share the files through email, some of the partners still want the add-in to be automatically opened when people received that document in order to proceed with further collaborations there. So this is the second place.

B

After voting, we also have some Partners asking for you know whether you can do a auto launch after specific events, for example, we have some data privacy or data security partners that they would like to check the content of or check the labeling of the document, or we have some encryption, uh some Partners who are doing data encryptions or document encryptions. They would like to fire some actions when people are doing the save of the document.

B

So, for example, for the encryption case before people are doing the encryption and save it to the cloud, they would like to double check to make sure Auto launch the add-in to make sure that the content is really encrypted.

B

These are the the top scenarios for this Auto launch and another one is related to installation of the add-in, especially when should we trigger the auto installation for the add-in, so, for example, for the top one is that, for example, for a company's template. If inside that company, they have some standard template and when user open up that standard template, they would like to have the add-in to be uh to automatically open um in order to do further operations.

B

This is especially required for Central deployment cases that they would like to have the domain to control. You know whether they want to Auto, open and add in at a organization level, and also we have the the shared case we just introduced, and another interesting thing is that people want to do the add-in installation, along with their main application, install process, for example many of our partners. They have your main application, so they would like to install the JS add-in during the main application installation process.

B

So that's something looks similar to the com add-in Behavior previously- and this is quite a interesting point and there are also some Partners asking for a hybrid mode, which means that if they have commenting in place and they develop the AGS add-in for web and Mac when the user installed, they come add in as a Windows device, they would like to automatically install those GS add-ins for web or for for Mac cases.

B

So these are the results for the auto open. So we, our team, is still actively evaluating these results and trying to understand.

B

From scenarios and come up with the solution So, currently we still don't have a ETA yet for the auto, open enhancement, but I will give another update once we have some new progress there.

B

Oh that's all for my updates today, thanks back to you, pristica.

A

Great, thank you. That was an awesome update. Looking forward to hearing more at our next call moving forward, so it Elizabeth will be going over the top five appsource validation errors from December 2022 to February 2023, and did you want to take over Elizabeth I'll? Do.

C

That thank you. Okay, good day and good evening to everyone I'll be giving an update about the latest top set of appsource Errors.

C

um We presented a few of them last time in December that was based on data, maybe about six months of data ending in November last year, so we're trying to do a series where we have this post talking about maybe a quarter's worth of data and we kind of report on it every quarter. So right now it's scheduled that we'll do one. We did one in March, we'll do one in June, etc, etc. Until the end of the end December, so look out for those blog posts as well.

C

There's a link to the blog post at the end of this so we'll get to that. This time around, we had five different errors, so I'm taking that as a sign that hopefully people have been using the information from the previous one, so they don't hit those errors, so different errors are bubbling up. If that continues, then we're hoping that this will provide enough information that you know the bulk of errors that do come up. People uh have the information they need to avoid them.

C

So this time we have these Five Arrows um doesn't work on Office for Mac. The functionality doesn't work as described Outlook add-in doesn't work on Safari privacy policy is unavailable or insufficient, or the add-in provides insufficient value.

C

So I'll dig into each of these one of the key things with if it doesn't work on Office for Mac check. If particularly the requirement set is supposed to work on Windows Mac more than likely on the web, and so, if you're, seeing that you, your add-in works there, you need to make sure that it also works on Mac like actually test it out and see that it works there when it goes through the appsource process.

C

One of the things they make sure is, if you've defined, you declared that my Adder needs at least requirements at X, that you've defined in the requirements element and maybe some methods- and you know depending then, if those support a certain set of os's, then what you want to do is make sure that it does work there like verify that your add-in works on those we included links to the related policy. If you want to kind of see why they're checking for that next up functionality doesn't work as described.

C

So this is based on what you've told us your add-in does. This is how it works, not necessarily how it works, but what it's supposed to do for the customer? What are the features, what the customer should expect and if, when they test it out, it doesn't deliver what it promises, then that's a problem, and so, for example, if you say that this Excel add-in has certain number of custom functions, this is what they do. Then you want to make sure that they do show up and that they're able to be verified include the instructions.

C

You know that kind of thing so deliver what you promised and we'll be good on this one. Next up, this one is specifically about Outlook add-ins at minimum. These are generally the browsers that they verify Microsoft Edge Chrome Firefox, and they check Safari on Mac.

C

So if your add-in is supposed to work on, Mac uh take the time to also verify that it works in Safari if it supports the web version, and that means that similarly, whatever you've declared in your requirements element the minimum set of apis that they work on these browsers, they were kind of various Osos. They work on at least the compatible devices. Okay, privacy policy.

C

This is really important, especially in this age. With data, we have to make sure that we handle people's personal information, whatever shared with your add-in, make sure it's handled properly, and you need to tell people what you do with it. So your privacy policy must tell people how you handle their data and make sure that it specifically talks about your add-in. You can't just say company contuso.

C

It has to mention that the add-in, how the add-in itself actually handles the data or your service, that's connected with the add-in, but even if it's not a privacy policy, that's specific to your add-in. It must include information about the add-in, like people must be able to go to the privacy policy and see the Adam's name connected with your service. It shouldn't just say: go to contuso.com.

C

It should specifically call out the add-in, that's been verified, and so one of the other things that you need to do is, as you go through the appsource flow to submit your listing the legal and support information. They ask you to provide a privacy policy link there and that's to facilitate verification and keep in mind that if you do have a terms of use that is not considered the same as a privacy policy for verification purposes.

C

Those are considered two separate things so make sure that if you do have a terms of use, you also have your privacy policy and that link is valid. You go there. It has the information that customers need to understand how your add-in handles their detail.

C

All right and last but not least, make sure that your add-in provides sufficient value. So this particular policy it requires that you're adding provides a software solution and significant benefits.

C

Some of the examples they gave enhance efficiency, Innovative features strategic advantages because, depending on what your add-in does, customers have to kind of get accustomed, take some time to work through the add-in and figure out how to use it and really maximize what it does for them, and so that means that it has to be with that investment of time and effort, so that they'll be really excited to continue using your add-in. One of the key things as well is that the add-in must interact with the Office application.

C

It shouldn't just be like a pass-through necessarily to be like come here and go to our website. You know it has to provide some improvement and extend office, which is the point of the add-in.

C

However, you're adding targets Enterprise, which came up last time, then there's a slightly different flow there, where you might get away a little bit with the add-in, not being quite so explicit, because there is some tie-in with a bigger solution, and so in that case you want to make sure that customers have the information from the add-in so that they can find out more about all these things, that your add-in provides your services from your company and that kind of thing, but you have to make that really clear to the appsource verified process so that they know that this is on a slightly different standard that they need to check for and have this information.

C

Instead of you know this kind of interaction that they're generally looking for in a commercial Marketplace added okay. So that's it for these five, this time and I added some resources here. The link at the bottom is the link to the latest blog post that we published last month. That's based on the set of data, and if you want more information about the checklist, the submission guide.

C

All of that, these links are here so definitely feel free to dig into that, and let us know if you have any questions about the flow if apps also something that you you do with your add-ins and you need some more guidance there. Just let us know all right, so that's it for my iPod I'll kind of look through and see.

C

If you have any questions about this, but look out for the next Post in about three months and we'll give you an update on what those latest set of errors are, so we can avoid those two. Thank you.

A

Great thank you. That was a great presentation, really appreciate all the insights there and looking forward to hearing more about it in a couple months, all right so moving forward. Those were all our presenters for today's call so we'll be now be going into the Q a section of the call so starting off one of our first questions this month was how long does it take to reflect the changes made in app registration inside Azure portal to the development?

A

Our answer is: it is generally a pretty quick process. That being said, there could be a variety of reasons such as your location that may be causing delay. It would be great if you could provide us with more context at this officejs issues page over here just so, we can get some insight into your specific situation because, generally speaking, it is a pretty quick process.

A

Secondly, this question was the apis, for PowerPoint are currently quite limited. Is there a time plan for when there will be apis to allow working closed with graphical shapes and text frames, specifically being able to work with charts tables, wider range of formatting for text frames? Freeform shapes adjustment points Etc, so the answer to this is Powerpoint. Api 1.5 has added apis to select slides text range and shapes within presentations, so I would suggest that you go see. If there's anything you could leverage from there.

A

We currently don't have a timeline for other PowerPoint apis being delivered, but we will update in the community call in the future once new things are about to be delivered. Secondly, this is a bit of a long one, but this question has been popping up for the past couple calls, but we finally got some answers to them, so this is regarding you asked for missing Outlook events so that isvs can migrate their existing Outlook com add-ins to the new web-based add-ins.

A

With that in mind, we are looking for the following number one: the ability to display a dialogue when compose reply, reply all or forward- is clicked. The customers want to either display a warning or in some cases like the compose, they want to force the user to select from a list of predefined subjects.

A

This is for a help desk scenario, specifically other mostly legal customers want to see a very prominent prompt show up when clicking on reply all, and secondly, they also requested the ability to support onsend, Outlook events or smart alerts in iPhone or Android. This is a frequent request from our partners and we need a roadmap from The Office Team to know whether this is a planned feature or not, and if not what to tell their customers.

A

So the answer to this so for question number one. We already have the events that you need. We recommend you use our existing events in the following manner. First, you go ahead and trigger an event you can handle when users create new messages, reply, reply all or forward and then, as a part of the Handler of that event, display a notification bar, so the user can select from the predefined list of subjects that you provide them.

A

After that, when the notification bar is clicked, you can open a task pane from which the user can select and insert and, lastly, to make sure the user is actually changing. The subject add an onsend event handler after the user clicks send you can validate if the subject is compliant and stop the send until the user changes it. So that's the answer to the first question and then to the second regarding the ability to support Onsen, Outlook events or smart alerts in iPhone or Android.

A

This is currently in our backlog and is planned for implementation, but we do not have a concrete ETA at this time. Our next question was: we have created a PowerPoint add-in for our app we've noticed that connectivity for our app seems to drop occasionally, but we're unable to reliably produce reproduce the issue. Is there any technical documentation that explains, if there's any resource or connection throttling, that affects a real-time add-in object from working reliably? So we currently don't have technical documentation for this specific scenario. I would recommend either.

A

The best course of auction would be to submit your issue to this GitHub office.js issues, page again, where we have the engineering team triage issues like this, and we can try to figure out what might be going on or also display your issue in stock overflow to see if there's others also having similar issues. I think those would be the two best Avenues to move forward here.

A

Lastly, the question was in my office: add-in for PowerPoint I would like to provide a library of slides and custom shapes that the user can insert in the presentation through functions in the audit. What would be the best solution for storing these slides and custom shapes after deployment to a wide group of users considering both response time and that I would like to be able to continuously update the content, the shapes and the slides, we're currently tracking down the answer to this? It will be present in the blog post that will be post did post.

A

This call so be on the lookout for that and if the blog post comes out later, we'll also talk about it in next month's Community call all right, and if you are new to office add-ins- or this is your first time joining, our community call here's some quick links on how to get started or how to learn more about office add-ins in general, we have a documentation link.

A

A few quick starts on how to get started, a link to script lab where our samples are located, how to join the Microsoft 365 developer program and also a link to all the documentation regarding office scripts as well, and if you would like to further engage with our team. These are two links for technical questions about office. Add-Ins so feel free to ask any developer questions here or also go to stack Overflow.

A

Both of those are monitored pretty frequently, if you have any product bugs that you locate, feel free to go to this office, Dev office.js location and file issues here, and if you have any feature, requests or ideas, please submit them to M365, Dev suggestions and, of course, if you would like to just send us a smile or a frown, feel free to go to inside office and send us a quick thumbs up or thumbs down, and we also provide a range of M365 developer. Community calls other than just office add-ins.

A

So if you're interested in any of the following there's some links over here, for example, the Power Platform or the identity platform, so you're always welcome to join one of these calls as well, and if you want to just run through and see a list of all of them, we do have an overarching Link at the bottom of the slide, so feel free to click on that and go peruse to see. If anything else is interesting, all right that will be all for our call today.

A

Thank you all for joining the recording will be available in approximately 48 Hours. On our Microsoft 365 Community YouTube channel, so this link here also has videos for all our past. Community calls as well, and you can also follow us on Twitter.

A

Our next call will be May 10th at 8, A.M, Pacific, Standard, Time, and once again you can follow this link to join the call again and if you have any questions prior, that you'd like to be answered in the Q, a portion feel free to submit your questions at AKA, dot, Ms, slash office, addends form that will be all for today. Thanks everyone.