Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Developers now have more ways to create great solutions with Microsoft Office 365

By

A person using a laptop that displays various Microsoft Office apps.
Shutterstock
Office 365 remains an important product for Microsoft, representing a core component of the company’s “cloud-first, mobile-first” productivity solutions approach. It’s no surprise, then, to see Office 365 featured early and often at Microsoft’s Build 2017 developers conference.

Kirk Koenigsbauer, Office corporate vice president, highlighted three areas where developers have new opportunities in building Office 365 solutions. The Microsoft Teams developer platform, the Microsoft Graph, and Office partner integrations all received announcements at Build 2017 about new ways for developers to leverage the more than 100 million Office 365 subscribers.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is the company’s Slack competitor, which offers groups with collaborative tools built around a chat-based workspace. One of its more powerful features is a robust developer platform that offers tabs, bots, and connectors that help developers build functionality into Teams that tie into third-party solutions.

Related

Today at Build 2017, Microsoft announced that it’s opening Teams up to all developers to publish apps through the Office Store. These apps will show up in a new app discovery experience to make it easy for users to add and utilize apps from within Teams.

In addition, two new capabilities have been added to the Developer Preview. First, compose extensions pull information from a service or app into chats to avoid distracting users with context switches. Second, third party notifications can now populate in the activity feed, allowing services to keep users alerted about key information and updates.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

All of the developer platform capabilities — tabs, bots, connectors, compose extensions, and activity feed notifications — can be packaged into a Teams app and then published in the Office Store. All of the new Teams features will make their way to the Developer Preview first, and will then roll out to users over time.

Microsoft Presentation Translator add-in

Microsoft demonstrated a new add-in for Presentation that uses the company’s translation APIs to enable subtitles within presentations in the same or different languages. Developers and users can find out more about the Presentation Add-in here, as well as sign up for early access.

Microsoft Graph

The Microsoft Graph is the API that serves as the gateway for grabbing information from Microsoft services and platforms, including Office 365, Azure AD, and Intune. Microsoft announced new Microsoft Graph APIs and functionality to make it easier for developers to integrate intelligence and data, including the general availability of SharePoint site, OneNote, and Planner data APIs.

Actionable Messages

Outlook on the web previewed new Actionable Messages last fall, allowing users to perform actions like approving expense reports and assigning tasks to team members without leaving Outlook. Now, Actionable Messages functionality is being made available to additional Office 365 users via Microsoft Teams, and in Outlook 2016 for Windows desktop, if you’re an Office Insider on the Fast Ring.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Some new integrations will be coming from Salesforce, Freshdesk, Wrike, and other services, and new Actionable Message tools are being made available for developers. Go here for more information on building using the feature for Outlook and Teams.

More Office 365 updates

Other Office 365 announcements include new ways to create Office 365 Add-ins, an integrated sign-on system for the Microsoft Graph and other services, and new File Handler capabilities for OneDrive. In addition, Microsoft Flow received new capabilities allowing it to be integrated with applications like SharePoint, and to create focused and tailored business processes.

Microsoft will likely announce additional details on Office 365 and the tools that enable developers to leverage what the company calls the “largest productivity service available.” Developers can sign up for the Office Developer Program to stay up-to-date with all of Microsoft’s APIs.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Mark Coppock
Mark Coppock
Computing Writer
Mark has been a geek since MS-DOS gave way to Windows and the PalmPilot was a thing. He’s translated his love for…
New ways Microsoft is enticing developers to use Windows app store
Microsoft Store Ads on a Dell XPS Laptop.

The Microsoft Build 2022 conference is now underway through Thursday and the brand is revealing a host of updates to its app store in particular.

The Microsoft Store will soon feature Microsoft Store Ads, which will be powered by Microsoft Advertising. The brand said the upcoming feature will allow developers to market their apps to the proper users and highlight new experiences to users. Microsoft said it will soon begin a pilot program for developers to design ad campaigns within Microsoft Advertising. Currently, developers can sign up for the Microsoft Store Ads waitlist.

Read more
Here’s everything that’s new in Microsoft Office 2021
Some of the apps that are included in a Microsoft Office 365 Personal subscription.

If you're not interested in subscribing or paying a monthly fee to use Microsoft Word and other apps, then you might want to consider buying what's known as the "perpetual" or "stand-alone" version. The most current version of this is Office 2019, but on October 5, Microsoft will be releasing Office 2021.

Pricing details for Office 2021 haven't been shared at the time of writing, but it's expected to be the same as Office 2019. Yet, there are a few minor differences in the core apps, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. Office 2021 brings a new visual look for all the core apps and a set of new features. Here's a look at some of those.
New in Microsoft Word 2021

Read more
Microsoft Teams will now protect you against phishing attacks
A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

One of the dangers of the internet involves clicking links. Even if it appears to be from a trusted source, you never know where a URL might take you once you visit it. That's why Microsoft is now rolling out phishing protections in Microsoft Teams, so you can worry less about hackers stealing your sensitive information with look-alike links and web pages.

With remote and hybrid work models seeing an increase and Teams use booming over the last year, Microsoft says this latest Teams feature is all about ensuring Teams is "the most secure real-time collaboration platform." Officially known as Safe Links, the new Teams feature is powered by Microsoft Defender for Office 365. Under the hood, it works by scanning a URL once it is clicked in Teams to make sure it is legitimate and trusted.

Read more