How to show vertical pane in Outlook add-ins in Ou

Question

I am developing an outlook add-in targeting OWA, Outlook 2016 for Mac & Windows. My requirement is to show the add-in vertically on right side while reading and composing mail. For compose it is by default showing as desired but for reading it is showing horizontally which I want to show vertically. In short I like to show my add-in exactly same as Evernote add-in is showing.

Your help will be much appreciated. Following screen-shot of Evernote in OWA is what I want to show including icon location (enclosed in red).

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I make such vertical add-in using YEOMAN Office Generator. for reference use this link. GitHub link for yeoman-office-generator. And make changes in your manifest.xml file is as belows:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<OfficeApp xmlns=
  "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/appforoffice/1.1"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
  xsi:type="MailApp">

  <Id>7856b76d-42c2-4b40-87df-c4bfb706246f</Id>
  <Version>1.0</Version>
  <ProviderName>Microsoft</ProviderName>
  <DefaultLocale>en-us</DefaultLocale>
  <DisplayName DefaultValue="Alore MailTracker"/>
  <Description DefaultValue="Send and Track your emails.">
    <Override Locale="fr-fr" Value="Send and track your emails with Alore Emailtracker."/>
  </Description>
  <!-- Change the following line to specify    -->
  <!-- the web serverthat hosts the icon file. -->
  <IconUrl DefaultValue="https://localhost:3000/assets/icon-32.png"/>

  <Hosts>
    <Host Name="Mailbox" />
  </Hosts>
  <Requirements>
    <Sets DefaultMinVersion="1.1">
      <Set Name="Mailbox" />
    </Sets>
  </Requirements>

  <FormSettings>
    <Form xsi:type="ItemRead">
      <DesktopSettings>
        <!-- Change the following line to specify     -->
        <!-- the web server that hosts the HTML file. -->
        <SourceLocation DefaultValue="https://localhost:3000/index.html" />
        <RequestedHeight>216</RequestedHeight>
      </DesktopSettings>
      <TabletSettings>
        <!-- Change the following line to specify     -->
        <!-- the web server that hosts the HTML file. -->
        <SourceLocation DefaultValue="https://localhost:3000/index.html" />
        <RequestedHeight>216</RequestedHeight>
      </TabletSettings>
    </Form>
    <Form xsi:type="ItemEdit">
      <DesktopSettings>
        <!-- Change the following line to specify     -->
        <!-- the web server that hosts the HTML file. -->
        <SourceLocation DefaultValue="https://localhost:3000/index.html" />
      </DesktopSettings>
      <TabletSettings>
        <!-- Change the following line to specify     -->
        <!-- the web server that hosts the HTML file. -->
        <SourceLocation DefaultValue="https://localhost:3000/index.html" />
      </TabletSettings>
    </Form>
  </FormSettings>

  <Permissions>ReadWriteItem</Permissions>
  <Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="Or"> 
    <Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="And">
      <Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="Or">
        <Rule xsi:type="ItemIs" ItemType="Appointment" FormType="Read" />
        <Rule xsi:type="ItemIs" ItemType="Message" FormType="Read" />
      </Rule>
      <Rule xsi:type="ItemHasRegularExpressionMatch" 
        PropertyName="BodyAsPlaintext" RegExName="VideoURL" 
        RegExValue="https://localhost:3000/resource.html" />
    </Rule>
    <Rule xsi:type="RuleCollection" Mode="Or">
      <Rule xsi:type="ItemIs" ItemType="Appointment" FormType="Edit" />
      <Rule xsi:type="ItemIs" ItemType="Message" FormType="Edit" /> 
    </Rule> 
  </Rule>
</OfficeApp>

Answer 2

Add-in commands will be rolling out soon to all users and all add-ins for Outlook Web and we expect it to be at a 100% in the month of Dec. Once its rolled out you'll be able to have buttons in OWA that launch task pane, as you see in the screenshot. For Outlook desktop for Windows, this feature is already available however for Outlook for MAC too we expect this to be out in December!