{"id":1287,"date":"2018-05-07T22:23:07","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T05:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/officedevblogs.wpengine.com\/?p=1287"},"modified":"2021-10-18T11:31:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T18:31:17","slug":"conversations-become-actions-in-outlook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/conversations-become-actions-in-outlook\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations become actions in Outlook"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Build 2018, we\u2019ve announced several technologies to help developers enrich emails with new interactive capabilities.\u202f These capabilities allow\u00a0developers\u00a0to engage with\u00a0their\u00a0users more deeply,\u00a0right in context within the email, thereby\u00a0reducing the friction\u00a0between intent and action.\u00a0If your\u00a0application\u00a0sends notifications,\u00a0\u00a0uses\u00a0approvals in business processes, or connects\u00a0to mail, calendar, and contact data,\u00a0you can\u00a0take advantage of new engagement opportunities across Outlook.\u202f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Adaptive Cards provide new ways to create engaging conversations\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Many email conversations require and imply actions – such as approving an expense report or assigning a task to a team member.\u00a0 With\u00a0Actionable Messages,<\/a>announced last year,\u00a0developers\u00a0can\u00a0transform\u00a0\u00a0their email\u00a0notifications, workflows processes, and conversations\u00a0into actions, enabling users to complete tasks faster right within\u00a0Outlook. At Build 2018, we\u2019re dramatically enhancing the capability of Actionable Messages in several ways, starting with the use of the Adaptive Cards as well as support for payments in\u00a0Outlook.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Adaptive<\/span><\/p>\n

Adaptive Cards provide a rich display format along with actions inside of email messages<\/em><\/p>\n

Adaptive\u00a0Card\u00a0is\u00a0a\u00a0new\u00a0<\/b>card design format\u00a0<\/b>that is\u00a0supported across\u00a0Outlook,\u00a0Windows in the Timeline View, Teams\u00a0and within Cortana.\u00a0\u00a0Every business process \u2013 and any service that sends a notification \u2013 can immediately benefit by adding adaptive cards directly into emails, bots, and Team chats.\u00a0\u202fA<\/b>daptive Cards<\/b>\u00a0are now supported for Actionable Messages within web-based Outlook\u00a0clients, and will soon be supported in Outlook 2016 for Windows.\u202f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You can now design your Actionable\u00a0Message card using the Adaptive\u00a0Card format. It\u2019s as simple as adding JSON markup to the body of your emails and making HTTPS endpoints available to handle actions. Office 365 and Outlook take care of the rest, including beautifully rendering your card, allowing only authorized senders, and letting you ensure that actions are taken by expected users.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Partners like GitHub, Asana, and Limeade will\u00a0now\u00a0support\u00a0Outlook Actionable Messages\u00a0with\u00a0Adaptive cards to\u00a0grow\u00a0user\u00a0engagement with their applications by lowering the friction of getting things done.\u202f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is very easy to build Actionable\u00a0Messages using Adaptive\u00a0Cards. Head over to our Actionable\u00a0Message\u00a0documentation<\/a>, now featuring Adaptive\u00a0Cards.\u202f To create and design your own Adaptive\u00a0Card, head over to the\u202fcard playground<\/a>\u00a0and send the card to yourself using your Office 365 account and view it in\u00a0Outlook on\u00a0the web.\u00a0\u202f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Streamlining Payment Processes in Outlook<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Payments in Outlook will enable users to pay bills and invoices directly from their inbox<\/em><\/p>\n

Many emails in your inbox revolve around completing payment transactions such as paying\u00a0a\u00a0bill or\u00a0invoice.\u00a0\u00a0We will soon be introducing payments in Outlook to help users to pay bills or invoices, right in email, without needing to switch to another app or service.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0Powered by\u00a0Microsoft Pay<\/a>, payments in Outlook is a fast\u00a0and secure way to pay from within email.\u00a0\u00a0To start,\u00a0it will be supported by\u00a0a number of\u00a0payment processors including Stripe and\u00a0Braintree,\u00a0billing\u00a0services including\u00a0Zuora, and\u00a0invoicing services including\u00a0FreshBooks, Intuit, Invoice2Go,\u00a0Sage, Wave, and\u00a0Xero.\u00a0\u00a0We are also working together to include Fiserv, through the Fiserv Innovation Network.<\/p>\n

Businesses that send bills or invoice notifications to customers over email can\u00a0now embed a payment action\u00a0within Outlook.\u202f To get started\u00a0working withpayments in Outlook,\u00a0please review our documentation<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Note that Outlook is not a bill payment service and Microsoft is not acting as a bill pay agent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Payments in Outlook will roll out in phases, initially to a limited number of\u00a0Outlook.com<\/a>\u00a0customers over the next few weeks and will be available more broadly in the coming months.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Start engaging your users in\u00a0<\/b>Outlook with Adaptive Cards\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Adaptive cards extend\u00a0Actionable\u00a0Messages to make engaging customers wherever they work easier, and more streamlined.\u202f Even processes like payments can now be resolved in the flow of working through email. This keeps customers focused, while also reducing\u00a0task\u00a0approval\u00a0and completion\u00a0times.\u202f With an ability to embed Adaptive Card markup into existing mail processes, getting started with\u00a0is easy. Review our\u00a0overview documentation around adaptive cards to get started <\/a>\u2013 we look forward to seeing\u00a0Adaptive\u00a0Cards arriving\u00a0in\u00a0users\u2019 inboxes soon!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Build 2018, we\u2019ve announced several technologies to help developers enrich emails with new interactive capabilities.\u202f These capabilities allow\u00a0developers\u00a0to engage with\u00a0their\u00a0users more deeply,\u00a0right in context within the email, thereby\u00a0reducing the friction\u00a0between intent and action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69115,"featured_media":25159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-365-developer","tag-outlook"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

At Build 2018, we\u2019ve announced several technologies to help developers enrich emails with new interactive capabilities.\u202f These capabilities allow\u00a0developers\u00a0to engage with\u00a0their\u00a0users more deeply,\u00a0right in context within the email, thereby\u00a0reducing the friction\u00a0between intent and action.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/microsoft365dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}