SaaS Updates for May 20, 2016

Yesterday, Google announced three new APIs to streamline workflows. Microsoft announced that the Skype for Business App SDK Preview was available for download, and it also rolled out a few accessibility enhancements in Office 365 for people with vision impairments. Asana introduced Dashboard reporting in Google Sheets and also implemented webhooks. And finally, Dropbox and Facebook Messenger rolled out a new integration.

New Ways to Keep Data Flowing Between Your Apps and Ours – To make it easier to get the job done across multiple apps, without all the copy and paste, Google announced three new APIs and a new feature to help workers get to the data they need, when and where they need it.

Communicate Directly with Customers via Skype for Business Inside Your Mobile Apps – Today, we are pleased to announce that the Skype for Business App SDK Preview is now available for download. This new SDK enables developers to seamlessly integrate instant messaging, audio and video experiences into their custom iOS and Android applications.

Accessibility Enhancements in Office 365 for People with Vision Impairments – Windows, iOS and Android platforms come with unique accessibility settings and built-in assistive services that many people with disabilities rely on. As part of our plans to ensure Office 365 applications, on all platforms, are inclusive and truly empower people of all abilities to achieve more, a key focus area for the Office 365 team this year is to ensure that our apps on these platforms work seamlessly with these settings and services to empower everyone to be productive on every device. Here’s an overview of how we’re enhancing Office 365 to work better with two specific platform settings and services that many people with vision impairments use.

Dashboard Reporting in Google Sheets – For team leads or project managers who are tracking work across lots of projects, Asana Dashboards are a great way to see progress across your projects at a glance. But sometimes you might want to do a deeper comparison across projects. That’s why we’re excited to introduce Dashboard reporting in Google Sheets. This new integration lets you build custom reports—tables, charts, scatterplots, and more—in Google Sheets, all using your Asana project data. Get insights on the projects that need attention, the rate at which initiatives are progressing, or who on your team is pushing work forward fastest.

Get Real-Time Asana Updates in Slack, GitHub, and More – We love Asana (obviously), but we know it’s not the only tool your team needs to get work done. To truly enable your team to work together effortlessly, Asana integrates with many of the other tools you use at work. You’ve long been able to connect your apps to Asana, and now those connections will be faster and more efficient, since we implemented webhooks.

How to Expand the Facebook Messenger App with Dropbox – In a recent update to both the Facebook Messenger and Dropbox apps, it is now possible to integrate Dropbox into the Facebook Messenger app. This means you can share files from your Dropbox cloud account to Facebook Messenger “friends” without having to use a third-party file manager; the feature works directly through the Facebook Messenger app menu.