NOTICE: Microsoft's new Outlook client and the Outlook VBO.

[ewilson]

Hello All,

Please be advised that Microsoft's newest Outlook client DOES NOT support COM interop. What that means is the Outlook VBO will not work with this newer Outlook client. See below reference from Microsoft regarding supported features with the new Outlook client software.

Getting started with the new Outlook for Windows 

The solution, at the moment, is to not use Microsoft's latest Outlook client on runtime resources. Alternatively, you could consider using the newer Microsoft 365 - Outlook VBO which leverages Microsoft's Graph API (RESTful web service) instead of COM interop and the Outlook client software.

Cheers,

Eric

[Neel1]

@ewilson - Thanks for sharing this.

is there a plan to handle this situation via the legacy VBO apart from using Graph API VBO.

[ewilson]

@Neel1 

To be clear, this is not a Blue Prism issue. Microsoft has dropped support for COM interop within their latest Outlook client. Unless they decide to add it back in, there isn't really anything that can be done from the perspective of the legacy VBO to handle this. 

Cheers,

Eric

[david.l.morris]

@ewilson This seems like a very big deal that would affect most Blue Prism customers. Is Blue Prism not going to reach out to notify everyone?

[ewilson]

@david.l.morris it will impact a large number of customers at some point. However, Microsoft isn't forcing users on to the new client yet. It's completely optional, so everyone can continue to work using the existing Outlook client.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft has received a significant amount of feedback on this too based on what I've seen across a few forums, so there's always the possibility that they will add COM support into the new client. Then again, they could take a hard stance on this as a means to get rid of some technical debt. 

BPE product management are aware of the issue, so I imagine a broader notice will occur at some point. In the meantime, I would still highly recommend that people begin performing an analysis of what would be required to move existing automations over to the new Microsoft 365 - Outlook VBO, and identifying any potential shortcomings. Should they find areas of concern, I'd recommend they create new Ideas on the DX Ideas board to address any functional gaps.

Cheers,

Eric

[david.l.morris]

@ewilson Thanks! I'd really like to get on Graph API, but we still have the same issue as when I last mentioned that to you where we would need to get some serious approvals because of the level of access we'd need in order to perform the same operations we do currently through interop. I do have it on my to-do list to get back into that and I recently talked to the team who manages Graph here. I'll just cross my fingers for now. 😃

[ewilson]

@david.l.morris something that might help you along with your justification to it, we added an additional action to the Microsoft Graph API - Authentication connector that improves the Delegated access token use case when MFA is enabled for the environment. So, if your IT folks are more comfortable with using named user accounts for the digital workers, and they have MFA as a standard, this should make it a bit easier to address.

Cheers,

Eric