Deliver more powerful add-ins to Office with new opportunities via AppSource and the Office Store

Office Add-ins team

Millions of users rely on Office 365 to help them express ideas, synthesize data, and collaborate with their teams. With Office Add-ins, and new Add-in capabilities, Office JS APIs and connections to Microsoft Graph announced at Microsoft Build 2017, it is now even easier to help those users achieve more. The pathways for users to discover and use new Office Add-ins relevant to their work have also expanded considerably. All together, these capabilities now let developers extend Office in more ways, with greater depth, and reach broader audiences.

New Office.js APIs and access to Microsoft Graph

Office Add-ins provide the ability for developers to use their web development skills to build new applications, as well as integrate existing applications straight into the user experience of Office. Office Add-ins are extending their presence across platforms, including newly announced support for Add-in Commands and Auto-open Taskpanes on Mac, and recently announced support for add-ins on mobile devices.

Behind the scenes, a powerful JavaScript API – Office.js – enables developers to access a broad array of data and behaviors within Office applications. At Microsoft Build 2017, we’ve announced several new APIs for accessing and working with content.

Within Word, the 1.3 requirement set of the Word JavaScript APIs is now available for production use in all platforms: Win32, Online, iOS and Mac. Developers can access detailed range handling APIs as well as manipulate tables, lists, hyperlinks, and built-in and custom document properties.  Within Word Online, coming soon, developers can also create and open documents. In addition, rich text content controls are now editable in Word Online. These additions unlock new possibilities to make dynamic document generation easier, and create customized documents directly from an add-in across platforms.

In Excel, new 1.4 requirement set APIs are Generally Available for Win32, Online, and REST and includes write operations to named ranges, working with settings, event management APIs under the Excel namespace, and accessing Ranges more flexibly with new accessor functions. 1.4 requirement support for Mac and iOS is coming soon. In addition, requirement sets 1.5 (custom XML properties) and 1.6 (conditional formatting) are Generally Available in Win32 and Online with iOS, Mac and REST platform support coming soon.

In Outlook, add-ins now can block before e-mails are sent, allowing add-ins to play a larger role in e-mail review and task process scenarios. This feature enables developers to build add-ins, which can intercept the send event, execute some logic, and allow the send to complete or reject it. It is currently available in Outlook on the Web for customers with Exchange Online or Exchange 2016 CU6 mailboxes. Only administrators can install add-ins using on send hooks; store add-ins will not support the feature at this time.

Seamlessly access custom APIs and Microsoft Graph

In addition to new Office.js improvements, at Microsoft Build 2017 we are previewing new capabilities for developers to easily access a wide range of data. With new Office add-in Single Sign On (SSO), users are automatically signed in to their Office 365 accounts. This opens access not only to an ISVs APIs and services, but also to Microsoft Graph without requiring an explicit sign-in by users.

Office 365 apps and add-ins now available on AppSource

Microsoft AppSource is the destination for business users to find, try and acquire business SaaS applications that deliver business value on top of Microsoft products and technologies, such as Cortana Intelligence, Dynamics 365, Power BI, and more. In July 2016 the first Office 365 SaaS apps were featured on AppSource and we are pleased to announce that Office 365 apps and add-ins from Office Store will now be available in AppSource, increasing the visibility of Office solutions and to make it easier for customers to find business apps in a single location.

Over 100 million monthly commercial active users can now access apps directly on AppSource or by clicking the Store tile on the Office 365 app launcher and over 1700 Office 365 solutions are currently available on AppSource in categories ranging from Collaboration, Finance, Analytics to Sales, Marketing, and more.

Office 365 apps in AppSource.com

Developers can drive visibility of their apps and add-ins to the global network of business users on AppSource as well as take advantage of the latest innovations and valuable features, such as the ability to deliver low-friction test drive experiences for their apps and lead sharing capabilities of the platform.  Lead information is automatically delivered to the ISV’s CRM system after users consent to lead sharing on AppSource. More leads can potentially translate to more paying customers, enabling your sales funnel. Currently supported CRM systems are Salesforce, Dynamics CRM and Marketo (or alternatively use Azure Tables). To learn more about test drive experiences using the AppSource test drive framework, read the public preview announcement here.

Take action in the ISV Seller Dashboard

Developers can continue to publish to the ISV Seller Dashboard to get their latest apps and add-ins for Office applications including SharePoint, to appear in AppSource.

Go to the ISV Seller Dashboard today to setup your CRM information to enable lead sharing. Once logged into the dashboard, select the app or add-in you would like leads for, click ‘Edit Lead Configuration’ and submit your CRM information to let AppSource help you drive business growth!

Centralized Deployment

AppSource provides a new streamlined method to discover applications, but organizations can boost the engagement of add-ins even further. With the Centralized Deployment preview, organizations can go further by deploying add-ins to their users today. Your corporate IT department can precision-tailor the Office experience with this feature, by deploying Finance-related add-ins for Excel for the Accounting department group, or by deploying Content-management related add-ins to Word for the Documentation team group, or target specific individuals or the entire tenant. This feature is currently available in preview, with general availability coming soon.

Taken together, developers can build more powerful Office Add-ins by taking advantage of new APIs. In particular, the addition of automatic sign-in to Azure Active Directory provides access to the full range of Microsoft Graph APIs. Developers also have new ways to deploy their add-ins to users, with new opportunities to connect to users via AppSource, and the availability of Centralized Deployment.

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