How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#1

Post by bhanks » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 3:48 PM UTC

How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013
lucidchart.com

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#2

Post by YeahKIA » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 4:04 PM UTC

This looks so much better than the vbscript API from the past. Is it as functional?

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#3

Post by stevewilhelm » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

Any experience embedding an application into Excel?

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#4

Post by bhanks » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

stevewilhelm wrote: post #3

Any experience embedding an application into Excel?

It is a diagramming app so it is really more useful to add into a word doc or powerpoint. What use case were you thinking of for Excel?

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#5

Post by oboizt » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 5:11 PM UTC

stevewilhelm wrote: post #3

Any experience embedding an application into Excel?

Excel supports task pane and content apps. So for a task pane app like this, it would be possible to make the same app work in both Word and Excel by modifying the "Capabilities" part o the manifest file. All that needs to be added is the following tag:

If the user experience is appropriate, then apps typically work very well in both Word and Excel without any changes to the application code.

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#6

Post by oboizt » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 5:19 PM UTC

YeahKIA wrote: post #2

This looks so much better than the vbscript API from the past. Is it as functional?

The Apps for Office API seems to be fairly limited right now to reading from a document and inserting text and images. For insertion, you can only insert data at the cursor point or replace currently selected text. There aren't yet options to move the cursor or insert more advanced document objects. (Although, the Outlook Mail apps are an entirely different story) I think the typical use cases that work well with this API are easier information retrieval while working on a document and inserting images or passages of text.

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#7

Post by ww520 » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 5:29 PM UTC

This brings back memory of OLE/COM/ActiveX control.

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#8

Post by stevewilhelm » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 6:07 PM UTC

bhanks wrote: post #4

stevewilhelm wrote: post #3

Any experience embedding an application into Excel?

It is a diagramming app so it is really more useful to add into a word doc or powerpoint. What use case were you thinking of for Excel?

I wasn't thinking about the LucidChart per say. I was wondering how an Web based-app could be intergrated into Excel such that a user was prompted to login and then import user specific data directly into a Excel spreadsheet range using an REST API.

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#9

Post by andzt » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 6:12 PM UTC

Have you found any significant increase in users from the "discoverability by being in the Microsoft App Store"? Also, any reason you didn't implement this as a classic COM plugin?

We wrote similar apps for Outlook 2013, but didn't see much traction. Also, compared to classic COM plugins (which are also still supported by 2013), the API is very limited. That combined with no backwards compatibility makes me think that it would have been better to implement this as a COM plugin for better coverage and functionality...

Re: How we wrote our app for MS Office 2013

#10

Post by jobowoo » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

YeahKIA wrote: post #2

This looks so much better than the vbscript API from the past. Is it as functional?

I was the program manager who worked on the Word APIs. The Javascript APIs were not meant to be a replacement for the power of VBScript. Instead, we optimized design for apps that could be used between various Office products. The only Word-specific APIs are around manipulating CustomXMLParts.