The Microsoft 365 ecosystem is growing rapidly and the number of add-on solutions for Office applications continues to increase. Microsoft welcomes your feedback and is committed to providing new features to help you build more powerful integrations with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. In this blog, the new available functions and features allow you to further improve your Office solutions.
Word 1.5 JavaScript API Requirements
The Word 1.5 JavaScript API requirements set is rolling out to production! These new APIs streamline key scenarios like citation management, document assembly, and more. In addition, the APIs also provide performance improvements in Word compared to the functionality available with the OOXML APIs.
These APIs extend and enrich the following areas.
- Paste file content from Base64 format and keep original settings for footnote, endnote, margin, style, watermark, track changes, etc. Use these APIs to import a rich format model, generate content, etc.
- Import styles from other files and apply them to the current working document. Use these APIs to save company-defined or user-defined styles in documents and reuse them as needed.
- Manage footnotes and endnotes.
- Manage four types of fields on the different platforms: ADDIN, DATE, HYPERLINK and TOC.
- Save and close a document.
- Fire events when you add, delete, enter, exit, change, or select rich text content controls. These events allow add-ins to provide a more interactive experience to end users. For example, users can see different content while navigating through rich-text content controls.
- Plain text content controls are supported on all platforms. You can now add, update, or remove controls for plain text content.
With Word API 1.5 many usage scenarios can be improved or unlocked. For example, the citation management scenario is now unlocked with support for field, footnote/endnote, and content controls. With support for styles, file inserts, fields, and content controls, assembling documents is much easier.
Support for add-ins in the new Outlook on Windows
Each year, Microsoft strives to provide the capabilities you need to improve your Outlook add-ins and enable experiences like never before. With the new Outlook on Windows client in preview, initiatives are underway to ensure seamless integration of your add-on solutions.
The new Outlook desktop client in Windows Preview unifies the Outlook experience across platforms in a single web-based code base. This creates a beautiful, modern user interface that offers a more consistent user experience with faster access to feature updates.
Already have an Outlook Web Add-in? Microsoft invites you to test it out in the new Outlook on Windows client and provide feedback on your experience to the developer community.
Because the new Outlook on Windows client is web-based, VSTO and COM add-ins are not supported. Some scenarios can currently only be implemented with VSTO and COM add-ins. In order to support you in planning and further developing your existing solution into a web add-in, this gap is closed and support for web add-ins is developed for these scenarios. This allows your users to continue using your add-in solution in the new Outlook on Windows client.
Mailbox 1.13 JavaScript API Requirements
As part of an effort to bridge the gap between scenarios only supported by VSTO and COM add-ins, Microsoft is pleased to announce that some of these features are now available in Outlook on Windows and the web with version 1.13 of mailbox are available.
- Define custom signatures with the OnMessageFromChanged and OnAppointmentFromChanged events. Adding these events to the event-based activation feature allows your add-on to update the signature when the sender’s account changes.
- Schedule messages to be sent at a later time, even when the Outlook client is closed, using the Delivery Time API.
- Activate your add-on and perform operations on multiple selected messages at the same time with the multiple item selection feature. You can now perform certain operations with a single click, such as For example, uploading emails to your customer relationship management (CRM) system or categorizing items in your inbox.
- Enable your add-in even if the reading pane isn’t enabled or no messages are selected in the mailbox by configuring the SupportsNoItemContext element in your manifest. Allow users to directly access content from various data sources such as SharePoint or OneDrive via their Outlook client.
- Automatically prepare marketing headers and disclaimers for an email when it’s sent with the pre-publish on send feature.
- Implement data loss prevention solutions via the sensitivity label API. Using this API, it is possible to develop an add-on to automatically assign and verify an email’s confidentiality label to ensure it is only shared with authorized stakeholders. This feature also introduces the OnSensitivityLabelChanged event, so your add-on can automatically detect sensitivity label changes and take action if necessary.
- Enable an add-in in shared mailbox scenarios by configuring the SupportsSharedFolders element in your manifest.
The sample scenarios described for each feature provide an overview of what your add-on can do. With these new capabilities, the possibilities to address other use cases are endless. Unlock these features in your Outlook add-in with Mailbox 1.13 today!
Discover the new features of Outlook add-ins on mobile devices
Microsoft continues to improve the Outlook add-in experience across all platforms and is excited to announce new features for Outlook on Android and iOS. Here’s how you can enable your users to do more with your Outlook mobile add-ins.
- Never miss meeting notes again! Activate your add-on to save appointment notes and other meeting details directly to an external system like a CRM or notes app. With this function, your add-in will be activated in the appointment reading interface and will implement a “Save” button. For information on how to implement this feature, see Log appointment notes to an external application in Outlook mobile add-ons.
- Support for event-based activation extends Outlook Mobile, starting with the OnNewMessageCompose event. Stay tuned for more information on this feature in the coming months!
Excel 1.17 JavaScript API Bundle
Excel is the ultimate decision-making tool. Add-ons extend Excel’s analysis, calculation and data visualization capabilities. Existing add-ons are enjoying tremendous success, and many new add-ons aim to bring the power of AI closer to users. Microsoft has over 2,000 APIs for Excel and has added a few that allow your add-ins to use conditional formatting and handle changes to table properties. The API requirement set for Excel 1.17 includes several new ways to customize conditional formatting rules and worksheet events:
- Additional APIs for editing conditional formatting rules allow you to customize conditional formatting rules of various types like cell value, color scale, text comparison, etc. You can also remove format properties from a conditional formatting rule using the clearFormat() API.
- You can use the worksheet event APIs to monitor changes to a worksheet’s name, visibility, and position. You can customize your add-in’s action based on these events.
Source: microsoft
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See also
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