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.
| Nimble – Get real time insights about your email contacts | GIPHY – Make 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:
- 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.
- Update your manifest to declare support for the Mobile Form Factor and define the actions you came up with in step 1.
- If applicable, make sure any backend calls to the mailbox are using our REST API.
- 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.
- 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!
