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Microsoft Office add-ons are going cross-platform too

By Ng Chong Seng - on 30 Apr 2015, 3:40am

Microsoft Office add-ons are going cross-platform too

Microsoft wants to turn Office into a genuine platform - you know, just like Windows.

We already knew that Microsoft is pretty aggressive when bringing its own apps and services to other platforms. And that’s true even for the company’s other crown jewel Office, which has reached more than 100 million downloads on Android and iOS after it first landed on the iPhone back in mid 2013.

That being said, the Redmond-based software giant hasn’t forgotten about its own platforms, having recently laid out its plans for Office on Windows. In a nutshell, there will be touch-optimized Office universal apps for Windows 10 for phones, tablets, PCs, and laptops (that is, anything with a screen size of 10.1 inches and below), as well as a new version of the Office desktop suite (called Office 2016, what else?) that works best with a keyboard and mouse combo.

At today’s Build developer conference, Microsoft has revealed more plans that it has lined up to help developers reach the 1.2 billion Office users out there. And it starts by turning Office into a genuine platform.

First up, the new Office Graph API will enable developers to tap into Office data and machine learning capabilities so they can layer third party data to create new intelligent solutions.

What's Office Graph? It's a collection of content and activity, and the relationships between them that happen across the entire Office suite.

Which then leads us to this next point: unified consumer and commercial APIs across OneNote, Outlook, and OneDrive. Now, Microsoft Office has supported add-ons (or add-ins or plug-ins) one way or another over the years; but with its platform-friendly strategy these days, the company is looking to do it in a more unified way moving forward. In short, add-ins that work across Windows, Office apps for Android and iOS, and of course, the web. At Build, we saw Uber running within Outlook for iOS, and an SAP add-on running in Excel for iPad, among others. In addition, there's going to be a new, single API endpoint for all Office 365 resource queries.

To be clear, Excel for iPad will be the first Office mobile app to get add-ins; support for Word and PowerPoint for iPad will come in the "near future". Office for Android extensibility, on the other hand, will arrive later this year.

From a user's perspective, this cross-platform app integration will enable users to complete a task without having to jump from one app to another. So it's good for user experience. And if this results in more and longer Office apps usage, it's good for Microsoft too.

Here's Uber running in Outlook on the desktop, which will also run in iOS.

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