Our guest contributor is Office 365 MVP Robert Crane.
It is now possible to incorporate third party software directly into your Exchange Online inbox in the form of Outlook Add ins. This allows integration between a service like Uber and Outlook. This would allow you to book a car ride service directly from within your calendar inside Outlook on the web rather than navigating between different web sites.
In Outlook on the desktop, the addins are listed under the message header.
When you compose a new message using Outlook on the web you'll see a new menu option Add-ins at the top of the page.
Selecting this will show you any add-ins already present as well as allowing you to add more from the Office Store by selecting the option Get more add-ins.
Most add-ins are free and simply require that you have an existing account with the service, which you need to log in with once you have added the item to Outlook on the web.
With the desired add-in open you simply compose your email as normal. You then take any actions required by that add-in and then you simply send the email.
Different add-ins have different functionality. Here you can see that the Evernote add-in allows you to send a clipped copy of the email to one of your Evernote notebooks.
The implementation of add-ins for Outlook points to the efforts that Microsoft is making to encourage developers to use the Office 365 platform. It also points the way to greater integration with common web apps and potentially integration across the whole Office 365 suite. Outlook add-ins are therefore an excellent example of how Office 365 has become a platform rather than just a set of hosted services. Make sure that you check the Microsoft Office Store regularly for new add-ins for Outlook on the web
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