m
milan.webdeveloper@gmail.com

Challenges

Following the successful migration of flagship product which saw significant increase in user engagement we looked to deepen our product’s integration into our customers daily workflows. The natural next step? Build where our users already live: their inboxes. To support this vision, we designed and built a custom Outlook add-in, fully integrated with our modern React ecosystem.

Strategy

To deliver a robust, maintainable Outlook add-in without fragmenting our ecosystem, we pursued three key strategies:

Monorepo Optimization | GraphQL for Unified Data Access | Custom Build Process with Webpack & OfficeJS

  • Adjust the structure of the monorepo to best support multiple projects running in different environments under one roof
  • Reuse React components from the flagship application in the outlook add-in
  • Maintain a consistent development experience and faster CI processes
  • Optimize payloads, tailored to the lightweight UI constraints of Outlook
  • Bundle and optimize outlook application with webpack and inject in OfficeJS
  • Generate a custom XML manifest for each environment
  • Automate deployment and configuration, streamlining testing and client delivery

Execution

  • Reorganized the codebase to isolate reusable components and services into shared packages which allowed us to build the Outlook add-in quickly without duplicating logic or UI elements already in production.
  • Queries used in the Outlook add-in were derived from existing operations and functionalities in the flaghsip app for which we leveraged GraphQL fragments to maintain DRY code patterns and adjusted query depth to optimize for Outlook’s UI constraints.
  • Built a specialized Webpack pipeline which bundled the React application with OfficeJS dependencies and generated dynamic XML manifest files for every environment.

Impact

After 8 months of development results were better than expected:

  • Launched a closed beta with 10 clients, 5 converted to paying customers within weeks.
  • Delivered a 20% increase in revenue from the Outlook add-in alone.
  • Received strong positive feedback from sales representatives, who began using the add-in daily as their primary access point.
  • Maintained platform consistency and engineering velocity without spinning up a new tech stack or fragmenting codebase.

For sales reps, the Outlook add-in was more than a convenience, it became a core part of their daily workflow. By embedding key functionality directly into the tool they already used to communicate and close deals we enabled them to access customer data and key information without switching tabs.