We want to share an important update regarding how Outlook add-ins behave when the optional connected experiences privacy setting is turned off.
How Outlook add-ins behave today
The Office Store (an avenue for deploying Office Web Add-ins) is considered an optional connected experience. This means that when optional connected experiences are turned off, add-ins are unavailable to end users. This includes add-ins either installed by end users directly or deployed by IT using Centralized Deployment.
How will Outlook add-ins behave going forward?
As a result of feedback from a number of organizations indicating that many internally deployed Outlook add-ins are considered essential or business-critical, we’re releasing an update that will enable Outlook add-ins deployed via Centralized Deployment even when optional connected experiences are turned off. For more details, see here.
Availability
Updates for Outlook on Windows are being released at the time of writing this blog post, starting with version 2008 (build 13127.20296) in the Microsoft 365 Monthly Channel and Monthly Enterprise Channel (MEC build 16.0.13127.20638).
If you are on the Semi-Annual Channel please note that we plan to release this in the next update in early January 2021, nevertheless you can actually try the feature today in the latest Semi Annual Channel preview. UPDATE: By high customer demand, we are also including this in the SAC 2002 November 10th 2020 Update.
