On Premise support from the new Outlook web app

Hi!

I do also wonder when and if MS is going to roll out this version of Outlook as the only option (did also get the promt to switch to "New Outlook" since I had the switch "comming soon to true". 

If MS plans to replace the old/current Office version with this new one and it is not possible to switch back we are in some trouble regarding the OnSite customers and the wildly used "MailLink" addin. Since that is not working int the new Outlook App.

So I also want to know where in the SO-Roadmap this is planed for.

//Anders

Outlook MailLink relies on a third-party library called "Outlook Redemption" written by a company/developer who has much more in-depth knowledge about the Microsoft-Office platform than we do, at least as far as Outlook goes.

I asked him about his views on New Outlook and the way forward. This was his reply:

Hi Jostein. It is my understanding that MS has no plans to replace the real Outlook with the new one. New Outlook is mostly a testbed for various new features and is geared towards home or light users. They already had Outlook Express before…

So according to him, this more like a new Outlook Express than an actual "real" Outlook replacement (which might make sense given New Outlook's lack of offline-support).

So for now, I think the best option for on-site users is keep using "full" Outlook. If new Outlook gains critical capabilities (like offline-support) and Microsoft changes their strategy, we should definitely react, but I don't think we are quite there yet.

I'm just a developer, not a product manager, so if you want some "official" statement on New Outlook, I guess you need to call back to the higher ups. :)

Hi All,

Thanks for your comments, This is the reponse I have from SuperOffice support this morning.

"We are looking in to different solutions to handle the usage of new Outlook but we see that there is no out of the box solution for our Onsite customers (yet).

If Mail-Link is essential for the workflow of the customer then we recommend the customer to not activate the new Outlook for windows. 

Web Tools should still be able to open e-mails in ''old'' Outlook even if ''new'' Outlook is activated, but this is not tested fully and we don´t have any official statements regarding supporting this.

The internal inbox is also a solution for customers, if the customer wants/needs to go over to ''new'' Outlook for Windows.

As Microsofts communication, webapp is quite limited which means that it won't be a replacement as long as it stays limited in it's use."

Trevor

It has been + 1 year since Comments on this thread.

Have a on-premise that have discussed upgrade to SO 10.

I was told (details are unclear) that the new outlook is used.  Before engaging with my contact, is what is mentioned here relevant (or not). 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/outlook-blog/built-for-today-designed-for-the-future-the-new-outlook-for/ba-p/4205635

a brief look into some postings by Mr Lapshin quikly made it clear that this is well beyond my insights.

Are there plans/ideas that may adress this? 

Maybe I'm missing something, but if if you use New Outlook, you should be able to use SuperOffice for Outlook instead of Outlook MailLink to cover most of your needs. This option should also be available for onsite customers, and has been for a long time.

If there are particular needs/areas where the existing offering isn't good enough, it would probably be best (for everyone!) to spell them out more clearly, instead of assuming everyone knows what you are referring to, or vaguely imply that something isn't working. Like you said, its been 1+ year now, and it's hard to remember all the things which were going on back then!

If you let us know, concretely, what the pain is, it will be much easier to provide a clear-and-cut answer about the current status (and possible future) options being considered.

Agreed, I used the new version of Outlook with "SuperOffice for Outlook" for about 6 months.  I eventually went back to the old version of Outlook, because of issues with the new Outlook client.  But from a SuperOffice point of view, once SuperOffice for Outlook was made compatible with On-Premise then archiving wasn't an issue.  I did have issues opening emails from SuperOffice, where it would't just open the email window on its own, it would open a whole new version of Outlook each time.  But this was an issue with Outlook not the SuperOffice integration.

Personally I still think the original Outlook is a far better offering.

Trevor

For a long time it was communicated that SOFO/SuperOffice for Outlook would only be available for Online customers. That was later changed when 'New Outlook' was/is being pushed by Microsoft as a full alternative for 'Classic outlook' and Maillink not being supported in the new outlook due to VSTO/COM add-in support missing.

SOFO OnSite support was released end of Augustus 2023, do note the following requirement;

 SuperOffice CRM Onsite 10.0.1 or newer (available on the public internet with REST-api enabled)

SOFO is still missing support for archiving e-mails from Shared mailboxes (this being the main reason that many of our customer do not switch to using SOFO), this used to be a limitation of the API availability in Outlook, but that is not the case anymore.

Hey David.

Thanks for the follow-up with some concrete examples.

SuperOffice CRM Onsite 10.0.1 or newer (available on the public internet with REST-api enabled)

It's true there are minimal version-requirements for CRM Onsite support. Without those SuperOffice for Outlook doesn't have any APIs to talk to and cannot function. I hope you understand there's really nothing we can do about that.

But it should be in the customer's own interest to be up to date on SuperOffice versions, both short term and long term. If they need this functionality, they will have to make the leap.

In short this is a solved problem, and it's up to the customer and their priorities, not us.

SOFO is still missing support for archiving e-mails from Shared mailboxes (this being the main reason that many of our customer do not switch to using SOFO), this used to be a limitation of the API availability in Outlook, but that is not the case anymore.

That Outlook MailLink supports shared inboxes is not really a result of specific efforts made during development. I don't even think it's part of the test-matrix. Truth to be told, some customers tried it, it "just worked" and they kept using it.

While we as a company haven't actively dissuased this, it has never been anything we have encouraged either.

With SOFO this is different. You need to enable new APIs in your app-manifest, you need to use different APIs to be able to access these emails. Some of the particular interactions we do (Exchange Web Services) are not as seamless with Shared Mailboxes as they are with personal mailboxes.

And we will need shared inboxes to develop and test with in order to make sure it works for our customers. I.e. we would have to put in a concerted effort to deliver this to customers (as opposed to being a unsupported feature the customer got for "free").

The official policy of SuperOffice (to my knowledge) is that we would rather have our customers use Customer Service to handle incoming tickets than to use Outlook Shared Inboxes (which we see as a competing feature).

As a result of that, we will not be putting in effort to actively support Shared Inboxes in SOFO. Users who are waiting for that will most likely be waiting in vain, and I think we are doing them a disservice if we tell them that support for this is on a future road-map. It isn't.

Hi Jostein,

I just noted the requirement a general information, I understand why it's there, that actually isn't an issue at any of the customers we support. 

The official policy of SuperOffice (to my knowledge) is that we would rather have our customers use Customer Service to handle incoming tickets than to use Outlook Shared Inboxes (which we see as a competing feature).

That is indeed the official answer that we also got from the product team/department, which we disagree with. A lot of customers do not use the request functionality in SuperOffice (and/or do not have the licenses for it😉), but do archive a e-mail from a shared inbox to start a sale process for example. Moving this to a request would add a lot of additional steps to an existing workflow (not to mention that this e-mail then also isn't displayed anymore in the activitiy tab of a sale for example, but instead is on a seperate request tab, which also is a issue for customers).

If shared mailboxes would be supported, we would immediately start moving customers over to SOFO, since it doesnt suffer from the stability issues of maillink (specifically, Microsoft deciding to disable it once in a while since it determined it was to slow/had an update/didnt feel like it)

That is indeed the official answer that we also got from the product team/department, which we disagree with.

As an engineer, I really can't take any sides here or say who is right. I'm just explaining the reason behind the feature-set of the product being what it is.

If you want that changed you will have to work with higher-ups and convince them you are right. Without that, I'd be going to counter to given instructions by implemeting support for such a feature ;) 

In the meantime, you need to consider that Microsoft will end support for "classic" Outlook (and thus Outlook MailLink too) not too far down the line, and you should prepare your customer for what options they will have when that time comes.