Seeing a mail app in Outlook
Published: February 26, 2013
This topic describes a mail app for Outlook from the end-user perspective, and shows videos of example mail apps, including Bing Map, YouTube, and VOIP dialer.
Applies to: apps for Office | Office 2013 | Office 365 | Exchange 2013 | Outlook Web App | Outlook 2013
A mail app for Outlook is a webpage that is hosted inside Outlook, activated contextually with respect to the currently selected item to enhance Outlook functionality or browsing experience. Mail apps can run seamlessly across the Outlook rich client and Outlook Web App, such that you need to install a mail app only once for a mailbox and it will work on the form factors and Outlook clients that it is designed to.
The Outlook items that support mail apps include email messages, meeting requests, responses or cancellations, or appointments. Each mail app defines the appropriate context for its activation. For example, a mapping mail app can provide a map of an address that appears in the message body, and so having an address in the message body is an appropriate context for Outlook to activate this app.
See the Bing Map mail app in Outlook.
As seen in the preceding video, when the end user is viewing in the Reading Pane (or inspector) a message that contains an address, Outlook activates this mail app for the message. The user sees a Bing Maps app button in the app bar. The user can select the app button to see a map of the address. The mail app then displays a map of the address in the app pane. Figure 1 shows the Bing Map mail app displaying a map for an address in an Outlook message.
To close the app pane, the user can select the app button again, or simply move on to another message or action in Outlook.
This documentation describes two other sample mail apps.
See the YouTube mail app in Outlook.
See the Phone Dialer mail app in Outlook.
Figure 2 shows the sample YouTube mail app.
To try the YouTube mail app, create an email message and add one or more URLs to YouTube videos in the body. When you display the message in the Reading Pane or an inspector, Outlook activates the app. You can then choose the YouTube app button. In the app pane, choose a video thumbnail to select a video, or the YouTube embedded player to play a video.
Figure 3 shows the sample phone dialer mail app.
To try the phone dialer mail app, create an email message and add one or more telephone numbers to the body. When you display the message in the Reading Pane or in an inspector, Outlook activates the app. You can then select the Phone Dialer app button, and select a telephone number in the app pane to use VOIP to dial that number.
Note
|
|---|
|
This app uses Lync as the VOIP service to dial calls. To run this mail app, you must have access to Lync Server, and have installed the Lync client on the client computer and used it at least once to set it up. You can adapt the code to another VOIP service that supports the same callto: and tel: protocols. |
This documentation provides the sample code for these two mail apps. Follow the instructions in How to: Install sample mail apps for Outlook to install them. For more information about these mail apps, see:
For more information, see the following resources:
