"Sideload" an App for Office programatically on the Desktop - vsto

I'm not sure whether "sideloading" is the correct term: Is therea an API to programatically install an Office Javascript API based add-in (e.g. a Task Pane app) in to the current / specific document on the desktop (at least on Windows)?
VisualStudio does this when you debug an App for Office project. How do I go about achieving the same?

There is no current way to programmatically insert an app (now "Office Add-in") into a document via JavaScript. It is a scenario that the product group is aware of, but it's not something we have yet.
You can insert an it via the Open XML SDK (which is actually how Visual Studio does this), but that would be .NET code running outside of the Office add-in (and not on the currently open document). Visual Studio in particular is atually inserting an app registered into the special local registry-based "Developer Store", but I can't think of any reason why wouldn't work for an actual Office-Store or SharePoint App Catalog-hosted app. If you are interested in going this route, let me know, and I might be able to find some pointers on the code you'd need to write.
Finally (though it probably goes without saying), you can insert an app into a Template, rather than a regular document. That way, anyone creating a document from that template would get your add-in -- I believe that's what the Paypal Invoicing add-in in Excel does, for example.
Hope this helps,
~ Michael Zlatkovsky, Developer on Office Extensibility team, MSFT

Related

Clarify what is safari classic mode?

My outlook add-in submission failed because my add-in doesn't load successfully in safari classic mode (as per email received from outlook validation team).
It is working nicely on safari Version 13.0.5.
I have been trying to get clarification on how to test this also -- at least I think we're talking about the same thing. In our latest report from Microsoft, this is referred to as "Safari in Outlook Web App Classic mode." I've also seen the wording "classic experience."
My understanding is that this refers to a "classic" mode of Outlook, not of Safari. They happen to be testing it in Safari. We're able to get to the classic mode, or something like it, by going to this URL:
https://outlook.office.com/owa?path=classic
You'll see a different Outlook UI there. I don't think this is sufficient for really testing classic mode, because some of the links will take you back to the now-default UI.
Finally, we got past an issue that was worded as "not available to be loaded" by changing the minimum version of the requirement set specified in our add-in's manifest from 1.7 to 1.6. The symptom was that although you could add the add-in in classic mode, it didn't show up in the menu to use. Fortunately our add-in does work with 1.6. This doesn't seem quite right, but it does work, and might point you in the right direction.
On requirement sets and Outlook clients supported: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/reference/requirement-sets/outlook-api-requirement-sets

How to implement UI testing for continuous delivery of a Office Add-in (app for Office)

We are developing Office Add-ins (apps for office) and we want to automate the testing for continuous delivery by using VSTS.
Because the Add-ins are web apps I wanted to use tools like Selenium, but that doesn't seem to work because the app is not in a browser (but is using the IE engine from within Word)
I tried using the Coded UI tests from visual studio, but they are not functioning correctly. It seems to handle some basic UI events, but even simple things typing text result in unpredictable behavior. (missing characters, clicking the wrong items).
I hope someone else has some experience on how to do this?
Thank you very much.
What we have done with our add-in, for automated testing of the task pane, is to mock the Office API methods we are using, and inject the mocked Office object into our code (vs importing the real Office API script and referencing the global). This has worked well for us, using Mocha+Chai+Sinon+Enzyme for our React-based add-in.

outlook security in asp.net webpage

I used http://www.everythingaccess.com/tutorials.asp?ID=Outlook-Send-E-mail-Without-Security-Warning , to finish my first ms access vba app that sends multiple notifications via outlook, without security pop-up. Now I want to make a WEB BASED version of it. So, using asp.net & mysql instead of vba & access raises certain questions.
When I comes down to it, what would be the difference of using (will post link below) vs installing VSTO runtime to run the outlook module I allready used in my first link?
Would you consider the "add-in" a more robust, integrated, easy approach since it seems I'd otherwise need to put the module of my first link in each users outlook install or am I just completely mistaken or is it a combination of both, please explain...
Click below for
2nd link of first post , outlook addin

GetUserAvailability from Exchange from a COM Outlook addin

I have a COM Outlook addin programmed in C++ (VS2005). I'm trying to see if within this addin I can get a random user or resource and see if it is available during a certain meeting time. Basically I'm trying to do something like getuseravailability() from the 2007 Exchange Web Service api listed below.
getuseravailability
Is this the only way to get this information? I've been looking through CDO, ADSI, MAPI and the Outlook object model but can't find anything else like it. I'm avoiding using web services because the Exchange Servers I run against may not have it enabled/ may not be Exchange 2007. And also, I'm hoping for a COM api easily integrated with the existing Outlook COM addin, was really hoping for an OOM solution.
Am I wrong or would the webservices sdk require .net to be installed on the machine running the addin as well?
I believe I've found a way to do this with CDO. Will be trying a sample app for this to see if it does what I think it does.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms870482%28EXCHG.65%29.aspx
I didn't find this earlier because the MSDN library's default view doesn't easily let you browse through the table of contents for a section. You have to go into MSDNs preferences and choose "Classic View" to get the table of contents view on the left.

Is it possible to develop a chat plugin like Gtalk for outlook?

My company uses outlook as the email client and we login to an exchange server. Out address book (not individual contacts) has all the users connected to our company network.
Our company dont have IM ;-( .. I am thinking about developing an outlook plugin like Gmail's Gtalk . is this possible(technically)? Or how difficult it is? Will I be able to get the list of all users (from address book) who have opened their outlook so that I can show them in the online list?
Can I do this without a DB (just sent the message to the recepient and show them)?
Outlook development is new for me and the links in this question did not help me much (very confusing). Where can I get some basic tutorials to begin with?
Edit: I have worked with VBA in outlook. So if the above can achieved using VBA the it would be great ;-) Is that possible?
VBA is an old method of building Office plug-ins and has since been replaced with just a more straight forward VB/C# module coding method. VBA plugins from Office 2003 should work alright in Office 2007, but it's no longer the suggested method if you're looking at Office 2007 + 1.
If you're using Visual Studio 2005, look for information on the Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Second Edition add-on on MSDN. If you're on Visual Studio 2008, the VSTO packages should come with the Professional editions (or higher) by default. It'll have all the templates for building add-ons for the Office suite. Going with this new direction of coding add-ons, anything should be possible.
I've personally never tried to make any sort of server/client solution, so I'm not helpful on that front, but I thought I'd put that information out there for you to consider in your planning stage of making the chat solution.
As a note, the non-individual (Exchange) address book is also known as the Global Address List (GAL).
Outlook 2010 includes instant messaging:
Use instant messaging services with Outlook
Microsoft Outlook can be used with several instant messaging services.
You can tell if your contacts are available for a real-time online
chat, audio and video conferencing, or file sharing.
Note Online status is available for any person whose instant
messaging e-mail address that you have added to your instant messaging
contact list. In addition, online status is shown for people using
Microsoft Office Communicator, regardless of whether they are on your
instant messaging contact list.