Revolutions

by Hong Ooi

This is an announcement that a beta Outlook email client is now part of the Microsoft365R package. You can install it from the GitHub repository with:

devtools::install_github("Azure/Microsoft365R")

The client provides the following features:

• Send, reply to and forward emails, optionally composed with blastula or emayili
• Copy and move emails between folders
• Create, delete, copy and move folders
• Add, remove and download attachments

The plan is to submit this to CRAN sometime next month, after a period of public testing. Please give it a try and give me your feedback: either via email or by opening an issue at the repo.

Here’s a small sample of the client in action (taken from the README):

library(Microsoft365R)

# 1st one is for your personal Microsoft account
# 2nd is for your work & school account
outl <- get_personal_outlook()
outlb <- get_business_outlook()

# compose an email with blastula
library(blastula)
bl_body <- "## Hello!

This is an email message that was generated by the blastula package.

We can use **Markdown** formatting with the `md()` function.

Cheers,

The blastula team"

bl_em <- compose_email(
    body=md(bl_body),
    footer=md("sent via Microsoft365R")
)
em <- outl$create_email(bl_em, subject="Hello from R",
                        to="bob@example.com")

# add an attachment and send it
em$add_attachment("mydocument.docx")
em$send()

# list the most recent emails in your inbox
emlst <- outl$list_emails()

# reply to the most recent email
emlst[[1]]$
    create_reply("Replying from R")$
    send()

Please note though, that if you’re using one of the workarounds mentioned in the authentication vignette, they won’t work with Outlook. You’ll need to get the Microsoft365R app approved for your tenant, or alternatively, if you have admin rights you can create your own tenant with the required permissions. (This applies if you’re using Microsoft365R at work; if you’re using it at home on your personal account, you shouldn’t have any problems.)

by Hong Ooi

I’m happy to announce that version 2.0 of Microsoft365R, the R interface to Microsoft 365, is now on CRAN! This version adds support for Microsoft Teams, a much-requested feature.

To access a team in Microsoft Teams, use the get_team() function and provide the team name or ID. You can also list the teams you’re in with list_teams(). These return objects of R6 class ms_team, which has methods for working with channels and drives.

list_teams()
team <- get_team("My team")

# list the channels in a team (including your private channels)
team$list_channels()

# get the primary channel for a team
team$get_channel()

# get a specific channel
team$get_channel("My channel")

# drives for a team
team$list_drives()
team$get_drive()

A drive is an ms_drive object, so if you’re already using Microsoft365R to interface with OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries, you already know how to use a team’s drives. Each team will generally have at least one drive, and possibly two: the default “Shared Documents” drive, which is where uploaded files are stored, and the “Teams Wiki Data” drive, if the team has a wiki. Each team channel will usually also have an associated folder in each drive.

drv <- team$get_drive()

# one folder per channel
drv$list_files()

# upload will appear in Files tab of "My channel" in the Teams client
drv$upload_file("myfile.csv", "My channel/myfile.csv")

chan <- team$get_channel()

# retrieve most recent messages from the server
msgs <- chan$list_messages()

# get the latest message by ID
msg <- chan$get_message(msgs[[1]]$properties$id)

# body of the message
msg$properties$body

# 10 most recent replies
repl_list <- msg$list_replies(n=10)

# body of an individual reply
repl_list[[1]]$properties$body

# sending messages to a channel
chan$send_message("Hello from R")
chan$send_message(
    "<div>Hello from <em>R</em></div>", content_type="html")

# attachments and inline images
chan$send_message("Hello with attachments",
    attachments=c("intro.md", "myfile.csv"))
chan$send_message("",
    content_type="html", inline="graph.png")

# send a reply to a message
msg <- chan$send_message("Starting a new thread in R")
msg$send_reply("Reply from R")

# files for the channel
chan$list_files()

# upload a file to the channel
chan$upload_file("myfile.docx")

# open the uploaded document for editing in Word Online
chan_folder <- chan$get_folder()
item <- chan_folder$get_item("myfile.docx")
item$open()

# download it again
item$download(overwrite=TRUE)