Office Add-ins community call - January 12, 2022

Office Add-ins community call - January 12, 2022

Call summary

This month’s community call features updates on Excel shortcut customization APIs (introducing 3 new APIs to assist with keyboard shortcuts management) from Abid Rahman (Microsoft), an SSO update for Office Add-in (call to action: add new SSO service in Azure for your SSO enabled add-ins) by Matt Geimer (Microsoft), and the latest Outlook event-based activation on Mac (announcing Mailbox 1.10 APIs and Event-based add-ins are GA in New Outlook for Mac) from Ashima Mathur (Microsoft). This month’s Community spotlight recognizes Eric Legault (Eric Legault Consulting) and Maarten van Stam (Deloitte) for their continued contributions to this community.  Q&A both at end of call and in chat throughout call. Please register for the PnP Recognition Program. The call was hosted by Alex Jerabek (Microsoft). Recorded January 12, 2022.

Microsoft Presenters

  • Alex Jerabek, Dev Writer 
  • Abid Rahman, Program Manager
  • Matt Geimer, Senior Program Manager
  • Ashima Mathur, Program Manager 

Agenda

  • Excel shortcut customization APIs – Abid Rahman, Program Manager (Microsoft) – 00:38
  • SSO update for Office Add-in – Matt Geimer, Senior Program manager (Microsoft) – 13:48
  • Outlook event-based activation on Mac – Ashima Mathur, Program Manager (Microsoft) – 18:42
  • Community spotlight – Eric Legault (Eric Legault Consulting) and Maarten van Stam (Deloitte) – 24:06
  • Q&A – 24:45

Actions

Q&A (Question & Answers)

Will shortcut key APIs be available on all hosts?
Shortcut key APIs are only available on Excel right now. We don’t have plans for the other hosts yet.

If a shortcut key is already in use by another add-in, is there a way for the user to override it?
Yes, the host (Excel) will prompt the user to make a choice between them. For more information, see Add custom keyboard shortcuts to your Office Add-ins.


Can I display a local image in a task pane? I want to use a path to a file, like file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/logo.png, but the browser forbids this action with the error “Not allowed to load local resource.”

Due to the sandboxed nature of how Office Add-ins run in a browser, this isn’t possible. Access files from a URL location on OneDrive, or other locations. Please consider submitting a feature request with more details about this scenario at https://aka.ms/m365dev-suggestions.


For the new SSO service, if the group authorization id is already in the list of authorized client applications, then there are no changes required?
Correct, but you may still want to do a quick test with the new auth option to make sure you don’t see any issues.


Are there any advantages to using SSO in Office, instead of MSAL, apart from the amount of code you have to write?
You should still use MSAL as a fallback authentication approach (when using Microsoft identity platform), in case SSO isn’t available or has an error. The advantage of SSO is you get the token without opening dialogs, and extra steps for the user. With SSO you can also enable admin consent via centrally deployed add-ins.

Is there a way at runtime to determine if we’re in Compose or Read mode? Currently I can check certain APIs to see if they are available or not, but a global option to tell me which mode we’re in would be very helpful.\

If you’re trying to execute different functions in Compose vs Read mode, specify that in the different extension points. For event-based add-ins, you can specify on which event the add-in should automatically launch (such as on message compose).

The latest Outlook requirement set is 1.11. but iOS and Android only support requirement set 1.5. Are there plans to update those platforms to support later requirement sets?
We are exploring specific scenarios for Outlook mobile extensibility. While the exact requirement sets may not be replicated, we plan to unlock some of the key scenarios with specific API support.

Azure AD provides a way to disable user consent entirely to always require administrator consent for all applications. Without resorting to this option, is there a way to grant administrator consent (on behalf of your organization’s users) to an app and in doing so, entirely bypass the user consent flow for a smoother first-use experience?​

For add-ins using SSO, there is a mechanism via centralized deployment that allows an admin to consent for the permissions for all users, even if the user was allowed to consent. You can also utilize this mechanism using tenant-wide admin consent in Azure. For more details, see Grant tenant-wide admin consent to an application​. Can Microsoft Outlook Policy Tips be used in conjunction with add-ins REST/EWS send API? Full description of problem described on Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70619981/can-microsoft-outlook-policy-tips-be-used-in-conjunctio... ​

​The team is looking into this question and will follow up on Stack Overflow.

Resources

Excel shortcut customization APIs

SSO Update for Office Add-in

Outlook event-based activation on Mac 

Q&A

Office Add-ins community call

Office Add-ins feedback