Microsoft Office was designed from the ground up as a powerful productivity platform for numerous PC-related tasks and jobs, and has gained massive popularity over the years, becoming the leading solution on the market.
However, making it a truly all-purpose tool, able to perform in practically every scenario that the modern workplace produces, is no small task.
To counter this limitation, Microsoft has included the possibility for independent developers to create their own functions into the platform, without compromising its integrity or copyright licenses, by introducing the MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface) protocol – a sort of “bridge” for anyone to use between the closed architecture of Office and supplemental software written in popular programming languages in order to include a desired feature. This protocol has allowed many to produce their own long-sought productivity improvements that Microsoft had or has no desire to implement owing to small margins – the main features of Office require many man-hours to maintain as it is. Consequently, an impressive number of such software products have appeared on the Internet over the years as the result.
