{"id":5857,"date":"2021-01-27T11:55:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/officedevblogs.wpengine.com\/?p=5857"},"modified":"2021-01-27T11:55:09","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:55:09","slug":"whats-coming-for-office-add-ins-in-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/whats-coming-for-office-add-ins-in-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Coming for Office Add-ins in 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we begin 2021, one of the team\u2019s goals is to do even more sharing of the enhancements we\u2019re making to the add-in platform capabilities in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. We\u2019ll highlight some of our focus areas for the upcoming year, with several additional posts that dig into specific topics and stories from some of the partners that have been working closely with us.<\/p>\n<p>The feedback you share directly influences the team\u2019s priorities, so please do keep it coming. Our primary goal is to ensure you can build powerful integrations and our backlog is the direct result of your input.<\/p>\n<h3>Focus Areas for 2021<\/h3>\n<p>This year, we\u2019re focusing our efforts in four places:<\/p>\n<h4>Enabling new capabilities for add-in developers<\/h4>\n<p>At the heart of all the work we\u2019re doing is a single ambitious goal: enabling every developer who wants to integrate with Microsoft 365 Apps to build an add-in that seamlessly integrates into our applications.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll do this by continually adding to the set of JavaScript APIs and creating new types of integration points that allow you to run your add-in at the right time and integrate with the UI in the same ways as native features. You\u2019ll see us continue to release new capabilities across our applications, for example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/dev\/add-ins\/outlook\/autolaunch\">Event-based add-in activation<\/a> support in Outlook<\/li>\n<li>Native UI for online meeting integrations in Outlook, building on the work in <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/dev\/add-ins\/outlook\/online-meeting\">Outlook Mobile<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Enabling add-ins to register <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/dev\/add-ins\/design\/keyboard-shortcuts\">keyboard shortcuts<\/a> in Excel<\/li>\n<li>Supporting <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/dev\/add-ins\/design\/contextual-tabs\">contextually visible tabs<\/a> on the Ribbon, starting in Excel<\/li>\n<li>Adding a new set of <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/dev\/add-ins\/design\/built-in-button-integration\">Ribbon Capabilities<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/javascript\/api\/powerpoint?view=powerpoint-js-preview\">rich APIs<\/a> to PowerPoint, starting with PowerPoint for the web<\/li>\n<li>Ongoing additions to our existing JavaScript APIs across all our applications<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Improving performance, stability, and usability of add-ins<\/h4>\n<p>New capabilities are important and exciting, but we also want to make certain that Office Add-ins meet your expectations for performance, reliability, and usability by:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Continuing to monitor and fix API issues as soon as they are discovered, so you can work with a rock-solid host API.<\/li>\n<li>Improving the runtime performance of our Office JS APIs based on telemetry, starting with a special focus on <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/dev\/add-ins\/quickstarts\/excel-custom-functions-quickstart?tabs=excel-windows\">custom function<\/a> performance in Excel.<\/li>\n<li>Looking for any issues in the Office Add-in install flow, guaranteeing that every user can easily install Office add-ins.<\/li>\n<li>Clarifying the messages shown for install issues so that users clearly understand why the issue occurs and what you can do about it.   <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As part of this effort, we\u2019ll also roll out versions of Microsoft 365 Apps that utilize the WebView2, so that you\u2019re building on top of a modern, fast web runtime that has all the web capabilities you need.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we\u2019ll continue to enhance the capabilities of the <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365\/dev-program\">Microsoft 365 Developer Program<\/a>, so you can immediately use a fully functional Microsoft 365 sandbox environment to develop and test your solutions on the way to sharing them with your customers.<\/p>\n<h4>Making it easier for customers to deploy and manage Office Add-ins<\/h4>\n<p>We\u2019ll also improve the capabilities that allow administrators of organizations to deploy add-ins to their users automatically, so that the right add-ins are installed for the right users.<\/p>\n<p>Our focus is to revamp the Microsoft 365 Admin Center experience, creating one place for all admins to deploy integrations. Behind the scenes, we\u2019ll see that admin-based deployment works for customers of all sizes, from small businesses to extremely large enterprise companies with tens of thousands of users.<\/p>\n<h4>Continuing to build an amazing team and work environment<\/h4>\n<p>Last, but not least, inside the team we\u2019ll continue our efforts to create an amazing team and an amazing place to work. We to put our full focus on building a platform that enables you to do your best work integrating with our applications.<\/p>\n<p>We want to learn from you what works and what you want to see. and hear the latest updates directly from our team is to join our monthly community calls. I highly recommend <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/officeaddinscommunitycall\">downloading the calendar invites<\/a> for upcoming sessions.<\/p>\n<h3>An exciting year ahead<\/h3>\n<p>As you can see, we\u2019re working on every part of the platform, from developer experience to service health and reliability to new platform additions. I am confident that 2021 is going to be an exciting year for us and becoming a member of the Developer Program is a fantastic way to get started and stay connected. We have lots of exciting things to show you and over the next few weeks, so look for our blogs for more updates.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you on behalf of the entire team,<\/p>\n<p>Tristan Davis\nPrincipal GPM\nMicrosoft 365 developer platform team<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5858\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/01\/Tristan-Davis-round.png\" alt=\"Tristan Davis\" width=\"214\" height=\"208\" srcset=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/01\/Tristan-Davis-round.png 214w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/01\/Tristan-Davis-round-24x24.png 24w, https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/73\/2021\/01\/Tristan-Davis-round-48x48.png 48w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we begin 2021, one of the team\u2019s goals is to do even more sharing of the enhancements we\u2019re making to the add-in platform capabilities in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. We\u2019ll highlight some of our focus areas for the upcoming year, with several additional posts that dig into specific topics and stories from some of the partners that have been working closely with us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69093,"featured_media":25159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-office-add-ins"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>As we begin 2021, one of the team\u2019s goals is to do even more sharing of the enhancements we\u2019re making to the add-in platform capabilities in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. We\u2019ll highlight some of our focus areas for the upcoming year, with several additional posts that dig into specific topics and stories from some of the partners that have been working closely with us.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69093"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}