New Preview of Office 365 API Tools for Visual Studio

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Amongst the multitude of developer-focused announcements we made this week at TechEd, we also released a new preview of the Office 365 API Tools for Visual Studio. This latest update supports a lot more project types and includes .NET and JavaScript client libraries that make it really easy to authenticate against and use Office 365 services from your client apps on behalf of users.

Although you can access the Office 365 APIs from any platform using REST APIs and standard OAuth flows, the client libraries dramatically simplify working with these services from a variety of client app types you build with Visual Studio. The client libraries will let you:

  • Perform authentication and discovery
  • Use the Mail, Calendar and Contacts API
  • Use the My Files and Sites API (currently .NET only, with JavaScript coming soon)
  • Use the Users and Groups API

Types of client apps now supported in this preview are:

  • .NET Windows Store Apps
  • .NET Windows Store Universal Apps
  • Windows Forms Applications
  • WPF Applications
  • ASP.NET MVC Web Applications
  • ASP.NET Web Forms Applications
  • Xamarin Android and iOS Applications
  • Multi-device hybrid apps

If you don’t see your favorite app type here, don’t fear, this is just a preview folks and we have a lot more work to do! In fact, the Visual Studio and Office Developer teams are anxiously waiting for your feedback on StackOverflow. Tag your questions with [office365] & [api] and they will jump.

What I find particularly awesome (besides the API and tools themselves), is the means by which the team is creating the client libraries as well as delivering updates in short sprints based on customer feedback. I interviewed Saurabh Bhatia, one of the program managers on the project. Besides “showing me the codes”, he also discussed the overall project direction, delivery cadence and eventual plans to open source the tools they built to create the client libraries themselves. Very cool.

Watch: New Preview Office 365 API Tools for Visual Studio

To get started, you’ll first need a Office 365 Developer site to build & test against and Visual Studio 2013 Pro or higher installed. Then install the tools here: Office 365 API Tools for Visual Studio

For more information on this update also check out: .NET and JavaScript Libraries for Office 365 APIs

And make sure you ask the experts on StackOverflow . Tag your questions with [office365] & [api]. (I’m not an expert yet, but I am learning!) You can also submit feature requests here: https://officespdev.uservoice.com/ 

Enjoy!