Microsoft debuts Microsoft 365 updates, including tools for developers to integrate deeper into Teams, Graph updates, and Outlook message extensions on the web
Microsoft today announced a number of improvements across Microsoft 365, its line of subscription services offered as a part of Microsoft Office.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has been broadening the subscription suite since its combined Office-and-Windows business subscriptions, while Outlook previously added LinkedIn contact information in the inbox. The new developer-facing changes extend that pattern from Microsoft-owned features to integration points across Teams, Graph and Outlook.
Teams had already accumulated meeting and workplace features such as breakout rooms and virtual-commute tools. Opening deeper integration paths makes the service more useful as a place where adjacent work applications can appear, rather than only a destination for Microsoft features.
First-order effects
- Developers gain new ways to connect their applications more deeply to Teams and to build Outlook message extensions for the web.
- Microsoft 365 customers get a broader set of potential in-workflow integrations across Teams, Outlook and applications using Microsoft Graph.
Second-order effects
- Third-party software vendors can seek distribution within Microsoft 365 workflows, raising the value of supporting Microsoft's Teams, Outlook and Graph integration surfaces.
- Microsoft gains more reasons for organizations to keep collaboration, messaging and connected work applications inside its subscription suite rather than treating those products as separate tools.
Third-order effects
- If Microsoft continues pairing suite updates with developer entry points, enterprise-work software competition shifts toward control of the workflow surfaces where complementary applications are discovered and used.
- The suite's differentiation increasingly rests on the ecosystem around Teams, Outlook and Graph, not solely on the individual Office applications bundled in a subscription.
The trend: Microsoft is turning Microsoft 365 from a bundled productivity suite into a set of connected workflow surfaces that outside developers can extend.