Office-js: Getting the draft in new tap when sending a message

[sarea]

We are developing OWA add-in and recently we start getting this behaviour which is when a user send a message it goes to a new tab or popup (it depends on the browser and its settings) with a url that looks like

https://outlook.office.com/mail/deeplink/compose?version=20200831001.10&popoutv2=1

Then that url is will redirect the user to a another url (in the same new tap) which is look like

https://outlook.office.com/mail/deeplink/compose/{ItemId}?version=20200831001.10&popoutv2=1

this page is just the draft page then the send button will be pressed automatically and continue sending the message as it like in the normal way.

I'm asking here because if I uninstall the add-in, this issue/behaviour will not happen.
What surprised me the most, that few accounts (~3) from the same organisation did not got that behaviour even when the add-in installed.

I'm really not sure what cause the problem, but I google it and did not find anything useful, also I couldn't find any related setting in the account or in the admin center.

Your help will be appreciated.

[AlexJerabek]

Thanks for reporting this @sarea.

@exextoc, can you please investigate?

[exextoc]

Hi @sarea Can you please give some more details about the apis which you are using in your addin which is causing this? Ideally it should not open a new tab/window when any addin is running and the message is sent.

[sarea]

Hi @exextoc we use officeJs api along with rest API, we also control the send, I hope this answer your question:) thanks

[exextoc]

Hey @sarea ,

Apologies for the wait, it took some time to confirm things on our end. What you are seeing is the expected behaviour if the OnSendAddinsEnabled policy is enabled for a mailbox. The popout and disable mode is to ensure the email isn't edited while it's being sent. You can read the documentation about enabling the policy here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/outlook/outlook-on-send-addins?tabs=classic#install-outlook-add-ins-that-use-on-send

The users that are not seeing this behaviour might not have the OnSendAddinsEnabled policy enabled for them. Please do have check if that's the case.

[sarea]

Hi @exextoc
Thanks for the response.

The two accounts that I mentioned have the exact same settings, so both have the onsend enabled.
Also, I have noticed that behavior on one of our test accounts, but not on my work account, then after almost a month, I start seeing it on my test account as well, and as I mentioned, there is a third account who didn't get that behavior.
All those accounts belong to the same organization and have the exact same settings, beside that the link that you referred to did not mention that we will get that behavior.

And the last thing, could you clarify a bit more on this:

The popout and disable mode is to ensure the email isn't edited while it's being sent.

As we can edit the email (body, subject, attachments, etc) while sending by using OfficeJS API

Thanks

[exextoc]

Hey @sarea ,

Yes, builds would have been updated as per the rollout. Do you see this behaviour consistently across your accounts now?
By disable I mean that the fields are non editable by the user.

[msftbot[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it is marked as needing author feedback but has not had any activity for 4 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 3 days of this comment. Thank you for your interest in Office Add-ins!

[sarea]

Hi @exextoc
Thank you for the update.
This issue is still occur on some of our accounts, the majority to be precise.
Is this a new thing?
Because we just start getting it 2 months ago.

Also, is there a way to disable this behavior but keep the sending functionality? As we got a lot of bad feedback from our clients because of it.

Thanks

[exextoc]

@sarea The feature has been rolled out 100%. Could you please check if it is still reproducible?

[sarea]

Hi @exextoc, thanks for the response

We still have some customers/accounts who do not get that feature.

There are a few things that still not clear to me

1- How come this become a feature? it's not mentioned in the documentation (including the link that you shared in one of your comments) that a new browser tab will be open/popup when sending a message if the onsend functionality is enabled for that user, could you please help me find that in the documentation?

2- In the onsend concept documentation I see:

The on-send feature was officially released in requirement set 1.8 (see current server and client support for details). However, note that the feature's support matrix is a superset of the requirement set's.

Either I'm missing something or this is not accurate, as we have been using the onsend feature for around 2 years now, I think it was since 1.5 or less if I'm not mistaking, but I can't find that in the overview of the old requirement set!
And as I mentioned in an earlier comment, we just start seeing this behavior around 2 months ago.

[Jcolnz]

@exextoc Hey there! I'm a product manager that works closely with Sarea on our outlook web add-in. Just to add a little more context to his comment above.

The problem we've experienced is that until recently, clicking send on a message would simply open our add-in wizard to help guide the user through the process before sending the message, now upon clicking send they are taken to a new tab with the compose screen, which then takes a few seconds and opens the wizard, from a UX perspective this is a very poor experience!

Some high-level points

• All users in the test organization we use had and continue to have the OnSendAddinsEnabled policy enabled, so this setting was never a contributing factor.
• The issue was inconsistently happening across our users, some test accounts had the issue, others did not.
• This is happening with some of our customers, and not others (again inconsistency, not only across customers but also users within the same customer's organization)
• We were unable to locate specifically in the API documentation where this is expected behavior, as Sarea pointed out, it would be really helpful if you could be more specific.
• The closest thing we could find is, but it appears to be optional?

Let me know if this is helpful, and if anything else is needed.

[rickgoud]

@exextoc : Any updates/response to the previous question? Also for us a really strange, most likely, unintended behavior that needs better explanation/understanding.
Thanks!

[rickgoud]

Running the MS On Send demo gives a similar unexplainable pop-up opening the message in a new tab... @exextoc @AlexJerabek. Can you respond please as for every one trying to use on-send functionality this must be disastrousl!

Thanks!

[exextoc]

• Thanks for letting us know the behavior, this can be a potential bug from our side. Please help us more with a repro video of the same, where you can edit the contents after send.
• We are investigating as to why it is enabled for some clients and why not for others. Please make sure every client is on the same outlook-web version.
• We are working on the bug with the documentation, the same will be updated soon.

[Jcolnz]

Hey, @exextoc I'm beginning to think we are not on the same page here with what we find to be the issue!

I've attached an example of what's happening, can you or someone from your team please confirm if the expected behavior upon clicking send is to push my message into a popup like in the gif, as opposed to how it has functioned previously where the onsend function executes in the original window where I clicked send?

[Jcolnz]

@exextoc @AlexJerabek Morning! Just wondering if you could provide an update on the comment above. If not could you please escalate the issue to someone who can?

[exextoc]

The on-send pop-up changes are as per design. This was made to make sure that email cannot be edited when On-Send is functioning. The documentation doesn't clearly call it out and its a bug from our end. We will update the documentation. However, we take the bad user experience part as a feedback and will evaluate it.

[rickgoud]

Hi @exextoc; you really mean the inline message popping out and at least causing a 4 second delay for every message, so frustrating people's workflow for every message, is by design and can not be suppressed/configured? I really find that hard to believe... and if so, should be considered a serious bug instead of 'feedback'? I guess 99%+ of all add-ins won't work and/or will be deinstalled in a couple of days, as no user will accept a 4 second+ delay for every message....

[rickgoud]

@exextoc @AlexJerabek ?

[exextoc]

@rickgoud We appreciate your feedback and concern on this. We understand that the user experience may not be optimal for the on-send experience on Outlook Web with send-delays. We will evaluate if the time delay can be reduced. It is a non trivial design change for us. We have put this work item in our backlog, but we don't have a timeframe for the fix.