Add-ins are now available for Outlook on iOS

Office Add-ins team

The Office platform is our way of enabling developers everywhere to help our customers get more done. Developers can bring their own apps and services directly into Outlook using add-ins, connectors, and actionable messages, and they’ve built some amazing stuff so far. For instance, you can now add a lead from an email directly to your CRM system, digitally sign important documents you receive as attachments, and update your notes, all right from Outlook.

Up till now, Outlook add-ins have been available to Outlook users on the web and Windows, and we’ve recently expanded add-in support to Outlook for Mac as part of the Office Insider program. We’re now excited to bring add-ins to Outlook mobile, starting with Outlook on IOS, with support for Android coming soon.

With add-ins, developers can make Outlook, called “the best mobile email app” by Wired, even better, by extending it with their own apps and services.

And because Outlook add-ins are built using standard HTML and JavaScript, they run on Outlook experiences across phones, tablets, desktops, and the web with the same code – except for minor modifications to fit the mobile form factor. 

Hear directly from developers at Nimble and GIPHY on their experience of building for Outlook.

         
NimbleGet real time insights about your email contacts GIPHYMake your emails fun and expressive

Build your own add-ins for Outlook on iOS

With today’s launch, Outlook on iOS includes add-ins from several initial partners. And starting today , we’re opening the platform up so that every developer can add mobile support to their add-ins with just a few steps:

  1. Decide what scenarios to enable on mobile. Not every action makes sense on the small screen, so be sure you’re highlighting the most important functionality of your add-in for mobile. Keep in mind that only mail read scenarios are supported right now.
  2. Update your manifest to declare support for the Mobile Form Factor and define the actions you came up with in step 1.
  3. If applicable, make sure any backend calls to the mailbox are using our REST API. 
  4. Build mobile-specific UI for the small screen using our design guidelines. Mobile add-in submissions require additional validation to ensure add-ins are providing a good user experience.
  5. Submit your add-in to the Office Store for validation. You can find instructions here.

To learn more, visit the Outlook mobile add-ins section of dev.office.com.

Happy coding!

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