MS Office 365 for web Automation

[DipinDevP]

Hi,

Can we automate MS Office 365 Apps web version (Excel and Outlook) using Blue Prism?

It would be very much helpful, if someone can explain the steps to do it.

Thanks,

Dipin Dev P

[saivikas729]

Hi, 

Just out of curiosity - why automate web versions?  instead of using objects? 

Regards

Vikas

[rafikBL]

Hello , 

If you don't want to use the desktop version (either because the client only has a web license or for any other reason..), I would recommend using the API version. It’s faster and has fewer errors to handle. You’ll find information on using Microsoft Graph in the newly added Blue Prism educational assets, which are very helpful : microsoft-graph-api-amp-postman 

Best regards, 

RafikBL

[DipinDevP]

Hi Vikas,

I am facing  license issue to use Office 365 Desktop apps, so just to know whether any methods to automate office 365 web apps.

[DipinDevP]

Thanks Rafik for your suggestion!

Are there any methods other than using Graph API?

[saivikas729]

For Excels - May be read using OLEDB, I only did read operations but i think you can also insert and update. 

For Emails - Try power automate online? it usually have good set of actions - may be you can read data and put it in SharePoint list or something and then use blue prism.  

Sorry / these are just ideas . not really sure what scenario you are in.  :D

[saivikas729]

Or SMTP for emails 

[david.l.morris]

@DipinDevP What is the license issue you are facing?

Some thoughts I have, some of which have already been mentioned. I'll describe ways I'm aware of for each app. I added Word as well because I wasn't paying attention to what you mentioned originally, so I've also edited this post to focus on that.

Outlook
My concern: This does not make sense to me that you'd have a license issue. It doesn't require a special license to be installed. It's possible that you are trying to use the same user on too many machines (more than 10 I think). If that's the case, I am concerned that you'd actually be violating terms of service so be sure that you aren't. I'm not suggesting you are doing anything "wrong"; I'm just bringing up the possibility of unintentional license violations. There is however just a hard cap from what I've seen where Outlook can't be set up on more than 10 machines for any one user account. The answer there is to simply have more accounts.

Alternatives for sending emails if you cannot install Outlook:
1 - SMTP
2 - Graph API

Alternatives for receiving emails if you cannot install Outlook:
1 - Graph API
2 - Supposedly POP3/IMAP but this has never worked for me, and I know nothing about it.

Excel
Excel alternatives if you cannot install Excel:
1 - ClosedXML -- I have been working on an object for a couple weeks, and it is amazing. Genuinely. Amazing. It's under MIT license so no issues in using it for free. It is a wrapper library for OpenXML, and is very easy to work with if you know C# at all.
2 - OLEDB -- This works okay for simple stuff, but there are many many limitations here where you can basically only just read and write data. No other manipulation of Excel files.
3 - Graph API -- This is Microsoft's suggested method, but it is only for files in SharePoint/OneDrive, and I haven't gotten access to this so it may be some effort for you too.
4 - OpenXML -- Just don't do this. Use ClosedXML instead which is just a wrapper library around OpenXML.

Word
Excel alternatives if you cannot install Word:
1 - Graph API - This is Microsoft's suggested method, but it is only for files in SharePoint/OneDrive, and I haven't gotten access to this so it may be some effort for you too.
2 - OpenXML -- This is something you could do if you absolutely had too, but it would take some serious C# experience. I would recommend trying to find a third-party library that wraps the OpenXML library for Word doc editing.

Those are the main three. There are other office products like PowerPoint, OneNote, and SharePoint, but I assume you aren't referring to those (edit: I now see you mentioned Excel and Outlook), but my comments for those would probably just be "Graph API", except that SharePoint you can also interact with the SharePoint API without Graph access. But again there I assume you aren't having SharePoint issues since there's no desktop app for that.

[michaeloneil]

Hi @DipinDevP 

There a number of office 365 assets on the DX available which might do what you need this would mean you wouldnt need the desktop applications installed. An example is this one for outlook Blue Prism Digital Exchange

[david.l.morris]

@michaeloneil That is Graph API. But I will edit my response a bit to include that there are assets that make using Graph API easy. (There must be a time limit on editing replies, so I guess I won't be doing that.) The problem is that it is not necessarily easy to get access to Graph API, as I am currently finding at my organization.

So, @DipinDevP Anywhere that I mentioned Graph API, just note that the DX team has created objects to make it simpler to use so you shouldn't actually have to think of it as an API at all other than for getting access to it initially.