Category: Office Development

What is Office 365, really?

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In my day-to-day dealings with people and organizations, there is a common confusion on the term “Office 365.” And that confusion is fed by a few common myths that I have heard repeated by some very smart people in those organizations. So, first, let me dismiss the myths…

  • The first one is that Office 365 is online, in the browser applications only… NO! Office 365 is NOT just Excel Online, Word Online, PowerPoint Online, Outlook Online, and OneNote Online.
  • And the second myth is that the desktop applications are getting deprecated… NO! Microsoft is NOT doing away with the installed desktop applications on Windows and Mac in favor of web based versions.

So let’s get to the question:

If Microsoft is not replacing Office with web versions, then what the heck is all this Office 365 and cloud stuff then?

Primarily, Office 365 is the name of the subscription. You no longer buy the Office applications on disks and install them, then buy the next version, etc. With the subscription you always get the newest version (and much more). As you will read from the link above, there are lots of FAQ’s and other information that explain how this works.

So Excel Online, ET AL. is PART of the Office 365 subscription based platform. Office 365 still includes the traditional Microsoft Office desktop applications on the PC/Windows or the Mac. And they are not going anywhere. When you hear that your organization is moving to Office 365 it does not mean you will ONLY be accessing Office from a web browser.

Office 365 is really Office anywhere, on any device. For example, Office 365 also includes applications on iPhone, iPad, and Android. And it is not just the traditional applications. There are incredible tools such as Forms, Sway, Teams, and for developers the Graph API. It also shifts workloads like Exchange Server for mail and SharePoint server for document management from local IT servers to servers run by Microsoft in the cloud.

So when you hear Office 365, DO NOT THINK GOOGLE DOCS. wlEmoticon-smile.png The online versions of Office are only there to provide an additional avenues to access Office from anywhere, on any device. Per the Office 365 website:

Works across multiple devices

Get the fully installed Office apps on multiple PCs, Macs, tablets, and mobile devices (including Windows, iOS, and Android).

They are not as fully featured and as such you really need to consider when you might use them over using the traditional Microsoft Office desktop applications. Per this site (my emphasis added):

Office for the web (formerly Office Web Apps) opens Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint documents in your web browser. Office for the web makes it easier to work and share Office files from anywhere with an internet connection, from almost any device. Microsoft Office 365 customers with Word, Excel, OneNote, or PowerPoint can view, create, and edit files on the go. …

The following tables compare Office for the web feature capabilities to feature-rich Microsoft Office desktop apps.

So, if you like your Excel just the way it is, installed on your scientific workstation with a bazillion gigabytes of RAM, you can still run it there if you move to Office 365. What you get with the traditional Office applications is more frequent, seamless and automatic updates from the web. Per the Office 365 website:

Monthly Updates

Get the latest features and capabilities with fully installed and always up-to-date versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint for Windows or Mac, OneNote (features vary), Teams, and Access and Publisher (PC only).

Hopefully, this has helped clear up and dispel the myths. And when you go back to the smart person that has told you otherwise, and continues to insist and tell you otherwise, please send them here. wlEmoticon-hotsmile.png

Web Add-in Side Loader Tool

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Whether you have been following the guidance for Centralized Deployment of Web Add-ins or you do not have Office 365 and you want to create a SharePoint catalog for deployment, but realize it has limitations:

App catalogs on SharePoint do not support add-in features that are implemented in the VersionOverrides node of the add-in manifest, such as add-in commands.

You essentially try all the options on this page and find that side loading is the only method that will work. So you give it a shot, it works and now you are wondering how to deploy that to a larger group of users.

That is where this new tool that a fellow co-worker (Marty Andren) and I created will come in handy: The Web Add-in Side Loader Tool. Here is the link to the GitHub where it and it’s documentation are located:

https://github.com/davecra/WebAddinSideloader

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues with this tool.

Extended MessageBox Library

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Several years ago I created this class to assist with making a better, more useful Message Box windows in Add-ins and other projects. You can find it here in my GitHub repository:

Extended MessageBox Library

There were a few times I wanted to show the user a message, but also provide them with a link. Other times I found that I needed to present an error to the user, but wanted to hide more “technical” details from them, unless they clicked a More Info button. I also found cases where I needed to present an error if the user wanted to stop a potentially unattended process, but also wanted the message to dismiss after a period of time so the process could continue. Other times I wanted to present the user with a useful message, but an option to “Do not show this message again.”

After creating custom forms, over and over again, this C# library was born. I recently was writing a VSTO add-in that needed the later option – do not show again – and dusted off this old library, cleaned it up a bit (not not completely) and used it again. I figured, for posterity, I would share this with everyone since I have found it so useful over the years.

For the most part you use this exactly like you would the regular MessageBox object, with some extra goodies included.

For example, this will create a very simple Message box that will look fmailiar:

ExtendedMessageBox.Show(“Hello World”);

Produces this:

simple_msgbox

A more common scenario you might need with a checkbox, looks like this:

checkbox_msgbox

There are a lot more options and capabilities. I will not cover them all here, but they will be detailed in the README in the GitHub repository.

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues.

OfficeJS.dialogs Updated to v1.0.9

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Like yesterday with easyEws, it has been a while since I have touched the OfficeJS.Dialogs library. I updated it yesterday with a quick fix and some content updates. I have had questions about using it from a CDN. The primary issue is that the displayDialogAsync() API does not support CDN. It just displays the HTML as raw text in the dialog. There are some ways I can provide this as a workaround, but it involves me support infrastructure. So, the better thing is to just wait for the API to support CDN’s.

If you have any questions about using this library, please let me know.

easyEws Updated to v1.0.11

davecraLeave a comment

It has been a while since I have updated this library, however I have had a few requests.

The first one that I am publishing today is adding the ResolveNames operation. The latest is now on GitHub here. And you can install it using NPM like this:

npm install easyews

Also, I have updated the CDN listing. Before I was using RAWGIT but that has been retired. You can now add the CDN like this:

To issue a resolve names you will pass the email address or the display name to the function like this:

If you have any suggestions for this library, please ping me.

Expanding Personal Contact Lists in Outlook with OfficeJS

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If you are developing an OfficeJS add-in for Outlook or Outlook Online (OWA) and your project requirements have a need to peek inside distribution lists, you might find that there are two kinds:

  • Distribution Lists – these are Exchange groups, or mail enabled Active Directory groups. These are managed by the enterprise IT and contain a list of email addresses and/or other distributions lists.
  • Contact Lists / Private Distribution Lists – these are personal lists created by the user that can contain similar objects.

For an Office Add-in, you must use the makeEwsRequestAsync() command to submit EWS to Exchange. And the specific command you will need to use is ExpandDL to get the members of a DL (or contact list). With regards to the first item in the list above, it is pretty straight forward. For the second item there is this blurb on the page:

Private distribution lists are located in the Contacts folder of a user’s mailbox. Private distribution lists do not have e-mail addresses so their store item identifiers are used in an ExpandDL request. Members of a private distribution list can be any mail-enabled user, contacts or distribution lists from Active Directory, or contacts or private distribution lists from a user’s Contacts folder.

The bold part is key. But where do you get this. When you request a to.getAsync() and receive “Bob’s Favorite People” as a recipient item what do you do with it?

The key is to call the EWS method ResolveNames. When you call this on “Bob’s Favorite People” you will get a return value with PrivateDL and an ItemID (the Exchange Store Item ID in the users Contact folder) that you will then send that ItemId to ExpandDL. Here is what the soap response would look like from ResolveNames:

You can then make your ExpandDL request like this:

The result will be a list of all the email addresses, like this:

NOTE: For now the ResolveNames operation is not supported in my library easyEws. I am working to add it in the coming weeks.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.

NOTE: I am not an Exchange Web Services (EWS) expert, but have some experience with it through the OfficeJS makeEwsRequestAsync() command. To get the answer for this blog entry, I had to go to a real EWS expert to figure this one out. Many thanks to Dan Bagley (EwsEditor) for his assistance.

Downloading the OfficeJS Preview API for Offline Testing

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Recently, I had a need to download the preview of the OfficeJS API for testing in an offline environment. The primary (and preferred) way to access the preview beta library is to point to it on the CDN via your HTML, like this:

However, if you need to download this for use offline in testing, you can actually download it using Node Package Manager. All you need is this command:

npm install @microsoft/office-js@beta

I was able to do my testing as if I were online with the CDN, so all was good. Happy coding! wlEmoticon-hotsmile.png