MicroStrategy for Office is MicroStrategy’s latest and advanced add-in that enables Excel users to tap into the trusted and governed data from MicroStrategy. The latest add-in is a futuristic product compared to its predecessor (legacy add-in) and includes many new features that are missing in the legacy add-in. The decision to pivot to a latest add-in stemmed from our desire to offer our customers the most up-to-date and secure solution. As we continue to improve the latest add-in with several advanced features, we continue to support the legacy add-ins for critical bugs and security vulnerabilities until the end of their support lifecycle.
Here at MicroStrategy, we strive to deliver solutions that enable organizations to achieve Intelligence Everywhere. We want to empower more users with business insights so that they can use data to make decisions without necessarily having all the technical knowledge of how business intelligence systems work. A couple of years ago, we saw a growing interest among our customers in an add-in that supports Office for Web and Office for Mac. However, the technology based on which the legacy add-ins were built only supported Windows-based Office applications. That is when we realized the importance of investing in a new product that supports all versions of Office. In 2019, we released MicroStrategy for Office, which supports Windows, Mac, and Web versions of Excel.
MicroStrategy for Office add-in includes two basic components: an XML manifest file and a web application hosted on the MicroStrategy Library server. A key feature of the latest add-in is that it allows Office 365 administrators to leverage the centralized deployment option (Microsoft 365 Admin Center) to deploy the add-in in their environment using the manifest file. Centralized deployment is Microsoft’s recommended way of deploying Office add-ins to users and user groups. Centralized deployment allows admins to have the necessary control over their environment and helps them ensure that their environment is secure. Also, with the latest add-in, deploying the latest software updates to the users only entails updating the web application. Whereas, with the legacy add-in, admins would need to perform a local installation of the latest version across all the machines.
Explore other deployment methods: Installing MicroStrategy for Office.
All the Office add-ins connect to the MicroStrategy platform via the Library server. See the table below for a list of supported authentication methods for the MicroStrategy for Office add-in and Legacy add-in.
MicroStrategy for Office | Legacy Add-In |
|---|---|
Standard | Standard |
LDAP | LDAP |
Guest | Guest |
Identity | Trusted (SiteMinder, Tivoli) |
SAML Okta | Kerberos |
SAML ADFS | NTLM |
OpenID Connect (OIDC) |
|
Note: MicroStrategy for Office leverages MicroStrategy Library for authentication. Any authentication mode available in MicroStrategy Library is available in the add-in.
Today, Office add-ins can be developed using two technologies: VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) and JavaScript APIs. We built the legacy add-ins using the VSTO technology, and in the latest add-in we leveraged the JavaScript APIs. VSTO is Microsoft’s legacy technology, and it has complete access to all the Office object models. Therefore, it is feasible to perform all operations on the Office client using VSTO. But the add-ins built using VSTO only work on a Windows OS, whereas the JavaScript API add-ins are highly portable. However, the JavaScript API add-in development is a relatively new technology (introduced with Office 2016), and only limited APIs and functions are currently supported.
Feature Support | MicroStrategy for Office | Legacy Add-In |
|---|---|---|
Actively developing the Add-ins | Yes | No |
Support for critical bugs and security vulnerabilities | Yes | Yes |
Support for Excel on Windows | Yes | Yes |
Support for Excel on Mac | Yes | No |
Support for Excel on Web | Yes | No |
Allows centralized deployment (Microsoft 365 Admin Center) | Yes | No |
Import and refresh reports | Yes | Yes |
Import and refresh dossiers (dataset) | Yes | No |
Import and refresh documents | No | Yes |
Import prompted reports | Yes | Yes |
Import selected attributes/metrics | Yes | No |
Import selected attribute forms | Yes | No |
Import formatted reports | No | Yes |
Import dashboard/dossier as an image | No | Yes |
Access objects from Library | Yes | No |
Filter data (prepare data) | Yes | No |
Reuse prompts | No | Yes |
Import reports with pageby into separate sheets | No | Yes |
Automatically rename sheet name using imported object's name | No | Yes |
Automatically refresh reports when the workbook is opened | No | Yes |
Browse objects - smart mode | Yes | No |
Browse objects - folder mode | No | Yes |
Note: Feature prioritization for MicroStrategy for Office add-in is done based on several factors, including the availability of Office APIs from Microsoft and customer enhancement requests.
