Make Outlook add-ins working with Office 365 shared mailboxes

Question

I am building apps with the new technology of Office add-ins (formerly app for Office).

The add-ins activate well when registered globally for the Office 365 tenant or individually by user (mechanical gear > manage add-ins).

I would like my add-in to work with Office365's shared mailboxes. The add-ins do not load in Outlook desktop or in OWA when the shared mailbox is open alone.

However, I managed to make it work when setting the shared mailbox as a shared folder displayed under my primary mailbox, as explained here (see picture below). It is better than nothing but not an acceptable solution, I would like my add-ins to be displayed when consulting my mailbox in Desktop client and in OWA when using the "Open another mailbox" (see link above).

My question is then: how to make add-ins working with shared mailboxes? A possible solution is: a shared mailbox seems to be related with a special kind of user. Would it be possible to install the add-in for this special user in order to have the add-ins always working with shared mailboxes?

Edited: Not supported for now. I created a feature request in Office365 User Voice. Consider bringing your vote to it.

Glogau

Answer 1

Outlook add-ins are not supposed to activate outside of your primary mailbox. This is intentionally disabled. What you're seeing with it displaying when opened under your primary mailbox there Benoit is likely a bug.

Caecilian

Thank you, that's what I was afraid of but I needed to be sure, I have created a UserVoice feature request (see original question last editing). – Glogau

Outlook add-ins are still activating on shared mailboxes on OWA. This leads to error and end-user complaints. Is this bug tracked by Microsoft? – Glogau

Answer 2

There is a new feature request to cover this functionality.

This feature request has theoretically been implemented and is in public preview.

Theoretically if you add the following under <DesktopFormFactor> it enables this feature:

<SupportsSharedFolders>true</SupportsSharedFolders>

However, people are having issues with this throwing Schema errors. See GitHub or StackOverflow. (NOTE: StackOverflow has a solution, but I didn't find it actually worked).

It maybe there is some undocumented magic so it could work now.

Nottage

Answer 3

The office add-in can be configured to show on a mail item. it does not matter the type of mailbox, if the item you are viewing is a mail message, your add-in should show.

The simple test you can do, does your add-in show in your mailbox mail messages? if yes, this means it should show in mail messages from the shared mailbox. It is divide and conquer issue we need to resolve.

Let me know if you have more questions or need clarifications.

Losing

Hi Mostafa, I think there is a confusion. It is happening with all add-ins for me, not just mine. The add-ins are loading well on my primary mailbox and for the shared mailbox when we set it in OWA as a shared folder. However, the add-ins are not there with the two other possibilities to consult a shared mailbox: Desktop client and OWA "open another mailbox". Are they there with your Office365 tenant? – Glogau

to be honest, i need more clarifications on your above comment. it is not clear to me now what you want to achieve on OWA or outlook client. – Losing

I am talking about the Office 365 feature called "shared mailboxes" support.office.com/en-us/article/…. Add-ins do not work for such mailboxes, see this picture with Office2016 and a shared mailbox "contact": keluro-my.sharepoint.com/personal/bpatra_keluro_com/_layouts/15/… – Glogau