Integration is pivotal to Office 365’s progress

Box, Dropbox, Google G-Drive and other storage services can be reserved as Office 365 Places. Firms will have comparison these systems over Microsoft’s possess storage for many reasons. One is that they have improved support for non-Microsoft products such as Salesforce, Slack, Apple products and Linux. Graph does not map third-party Places. In some cases, review logs and record histories might be confirmed longer with non-Microsoft information stores.

Box and Dropbox both contend their Microsoft integrations are frictionless. All a Office 365 abounding patron products can entrance calm directly from both and open files with a choice of a applicable abounding patron or cloud-based Microsoft collection when comparison directly from their storage systems. Office 365 co-authoring is upheld and both have already integrated with Microsoft Teams.

Box says policies can be set to prompt users to send calm around a secure Box couple rather than an email attachment. Microsoft Office papers and some-more than 120 opposite record forms can be previewed natively in a browser. Beyond Office 365, Box has other third-party integrations, for instance it can act as a calm covering for Salesforce and Slack.

Dropbox and Office 365 is improved than a sum of a parts, according to Dropbox, that also says it has thousands of integrations built into a platform. These embody other capability collection from Slack, Salesforce and Adobe and confidence products from Okta, Symantec, MobileIron and Microsoft Cloud App Security (based on a 2015 merger of Adallom, that was already a Dropbox partner).

To make Office 365 duty as a height and attract third parties to integrate, Microsoft has many focus programming interfaces (APIs). These contingency both capacitate Office 365 collection to entrance non-Microsoft Places and capacitate third-party collection to manipulate calm permitted around Office 365 Graph.

Confusingly, Microsoft has another Graph, Microsoft Graph, introduced in 2015, that is a one API, mixing APIs from Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, Planner and Office 365 Graph. Microsoft Graph does not count on Office 365 Graph, though provides some-more functionality when a latter is enabled. Microsoft Graph’s accessibility does not meant other APIs have been disabled.

No height would be finish though a store to find out and representation a integrations on offer. The Office Store now lists 2,196 Microsoft and third-party apps/add-ons that have been integrated during some turn with Office 365. All a categorical Microsoft abounding patron products are listed on a store. Prices are given in US dollars, even if we are logged in as a UK-based subscriber.

Applications can be searched for by their organisation with one of 8 Office 365 products. Topping a list is SharePoint with 1,183 add-ons, followed by Excel with 338, Word 264, Outlook 246, PowerPoint 146, Power BI 97, Project 35 and OneNote 11, that adds adult to some-more than a total, indicating some overlap.

Applications can also be searched for by 11 functions including communication, patron attribute government (CRM), information analytics, education, capability and search.

Some are giveaway add-ins; others are charged for. For example, there are now 28 “Best apps of a year”, 7 are free, 15 labelled “Additional squeeze might be required” (freemium – we get something for zero adult front, though might catch a assign down a line). Six have prices trimming from one-off charges of $3.99 for Range Tracker for Excel to $299 for a sales and event maximiser for SharePoint and Sensei Schedule Analyzer for Project, or $29.99 a month for Milestone Gantt for SharePoint.

Searches for Microsoft’s possess products arrangement copiousness of options, for instance “Dynamics” (the family name for Microsoft business applications) earnings 78 applications, including a giveaway one from Microsoft that “enables information connectors to Microsoft Dynamics systems” and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online connector. There are several add-ins for Skype for Business.

Searching for certain third-party products also turns adult copiousness of options. “Salesforce” earnings 30 apps, many of that have transparent links to a eponymous cloud CRM service, including Salesforce’s possess “Lightning for Outlook”. There are 5 for SAP (none from SAP itself). “Oracle” earnings seven, though nothing appears to be from a retailer Oracle. Searching for Google earnings 97 items. Software giants can’t equivocate any other – some are specific to G Suite. There are 12 add-ins joining Zoho’s SMB bureau apartment to Office 365.

The Office Store is not a be-all and end-all – there are many other Office 365 integrations accessible that are not listed. The Box and Dropbox links above do not feature. RiskIQ, a digital rights government retailer focused especially on Office 365, is also not listed. There contingency be many others with links to Office 365 that are not in a store.