As Microsoft’s Office 365 continues to gain in popularity, Microsoft’s pivot of extending the productivity suite into a platform is becoming of increasing priority for the company. Microsoft has recently begun leaning on the help from interested developers to help turn Office 365 into its next competitive platform.
To help devs get started, Microsoft launched the monthly Office 365 Dev Digest. Each month, various members of the Office 365 development team contribute a slew of information regarding the progress, updates, features, and development tools available for Office 365.
Recently, Jeremy Thake, the technical product manager for the Office 365 Dev team wrote an extensive post covering recent Office 365 additions. In Jeremy’s post, he covers Office UI Fabric, building Office Add-ins, Microsoft’s GitHub development channel, and developer marketing.
Other blogs in the series cover dates for upcoming dev meet-ups and links to other Dev community blog post within the Microsoft ecosystem and partner communities. Other niceties devs may enjoy, include links to code samples, developer podcast as well as complete FAQ, PnP’s, official Office developer documentation, and contact info.
The Office 365 monthly Dev Digest tends to be a one-stop shop for devs looking to help expand Office 365’s abilities while also potentially reaping some financial benefits in the process. Furthermore, the Dev Digest appears to be a two-way communicative platform for Microsoft. Devs are encouraged to join community discussions through Yammer, offer suggestions through Twitter and Facebook as well submit topics of discussion for the Dev podcast.
Microsoft’s transition away from Windows as the sole platform for the company has shed some light on where it plans to go in the future as a business. Arguably, connected cloud and Office is where Microsoft is putting its collective resources. For devs interested in the new Microsoft ecosystem, it seems Office 365 is the place to be, and the Office 365 Dev Digest is the place to get started.
