The power of productivity is unleashed as office365 apps becomes better with Add-ins. The full integration of Add-ins was announced by Microsoft in March 2023, and how it can enhance productivity for users of its office365 applications.
In a statement disclosed on their blog:
“You can use the office Add-ins platform to build solutions that extend office applications and interact with content in office documents. With office Add-ins, you can use familiar technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to extend and interact with Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Project.”
The integration is said to be cross-platforms, meaning it will work on all office365 apps running on Windows, Mac, iPad, and even A Web-browser, with new functionalities which is to be expected in the Build 2023.
In a published article on their dev-blog sometime in June (14th June, 2023, the company describe to the community, on what to expect in the expansion of office365 functionalities .
They stated:
“The Microsoft 365 ecosystem is expanding rapidly, and we’re seeing an increase number of add-in solutions across office applications. We value your feedback and are committed to delivering new capabilities to help you build more powerful integrations with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.”
JavaScript API Requirement Set for Word 1.5:
JavaScript API requirement set for Word 1.5, has been rolled out in production. Office Add-in dev team stated:
“These new APIs streamline important scenarios such as citation management, document assembly and so on.”
The API is said to enhance performance within Word, compared to the features available using OOXML APIs (Office Open eXtensible Markup Language). Information about the Word 1.5 requirement set and on demand video Build with Microsoft Word platform: Word JavaScript APIs and Key user scenarios, were published by the team.
The API enables writers or app users to insert base64 contents, and still retain settings in the footnotes, page border, watermark, track changes in documents and many other varieties of functions. Additional features include importing styles from other files, and able to apply them in the current document the user is working on. Plain text support is not left out either as content written in plain-text are possible across all supported platforms.
The Add-in developer team commented:
“With Word API 1.5, many user scenarios can be enhanced or unlocked. For example, citation management scenarios are now unblocked with the support of Field, Footnote / Endnote, and content controls. Assembling documents is much easier with styles, file insertion, Fields and Content Control support.”
The beauty is that now more, and more applications are now able to be integrated as Add-ins across office 365.
In the MS-Word, over 13-categories of Add-in tools are found, and users can decide to add as much add-ins as they desire, although most of these are only limited for 30-day trial, with a request to purchase a license key.
JavaScript API Set for Excel 1.17:
The power of using Excel sheets in computing formulars or complex data cannot be short-expressed. This makes it the ultimate-decision-making tool. The new Add-in update is said to extend data analysis, calculation, and visualization capabilities into something more amazing.
Office365 dev team describe what is to be expected:
“We see a ton of success from existing add-ins and many new add-ins are focused on bringing the power of AI to users. We have over 2000 APIs available for Excel, and we have added a few more that enable your add-ins to work with conditional formatting, and handle changes to worksheet properties.”
The Excel 1.17 makes it more convenient for multiple new methods to be set, the adjustment of conditional formatting rules, and worksheet events. The Excel-Sheet offers over 14-categories, and users can do much more way complex things, as more and more add-ins are being integrated.
Add-ins on Outlook Desktop Client:
The Outlook desktop client, is not left out on the new Add-in integrated into office 365. The updates boast of the new desktop client unifying Outlook experiences across all platforms into a single codebase.
This is said to improve the interface into a modern one, capable of delivering a more consistent user experience and faster access to more features updates. Other enhanced features include, users’ ability to set a custom signature, with an activation feature which updates the signature in the event of the sender’s account changes.
It also provides a prepend capability for marketing headers and legal disclaimers to mails, when it is sent with the prepend-on-send feature.
The update on outlook client, is also to be integrated across all platforms (Outlook on Android and iOS). With no doubt, that this will booster notes, and ensuring meetings are not missed, log appointments notes, and other details from an external system.
Outlook Mobile is said to be expanding, starting with the “OnNewMessageCompose” event, and users are informed to stay tunned for more information about this new feature.
We at Fixitgearware believe that, Microsoft has taken a great step on enhancing Productivity, and content writing. This makes it much easy, and fun to integrate your ideas on any of the office365 apps, while bringing writers, users, and creators’ creativity, to live.
Put your comments below in the comment section on your thoughts about this.