Starbucks and Microsoft have released a tool to help promote the famous coffee chain through Outlook. But there’s more limitations to the offer than the hype suggests.
Starbucks for Outlook is promoted as for Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013 and Outlook.com but it’s more complicated than that. We’ll look at that below.
What duzzit do?
The tool lets you find Starbucks outlets across the globe. In an open calendar appointment open the Starbucks item on the Add-ins menu.
Click on a Starbucks location and the details are inserted into the appointment.
You can send that appointment to others.
In an email message, open the Starbucks addin to see egift card options:
Special Offer: “Get a $5 Starbucks eGift Card for yourself when you send an eGift (of $5 or more) using the Starbucks for Outlook add-in. Valid through July 15th, 2016. Limit one per person, while supplies last. See full Terms and Conditions. See full Terms of Use here. ”
Digging deeper we see that the offer is for US residents only and only the first 50,000 people who take up the deal.
Who can get it?
Go to the Office Store page for the Starbucks add-in to see the requirements for running this add-in.
“Important: You must have an Office365 or Exchange account to use this add-in.
This add-in requires one of the following applications:
- Outlook 2013 Service Pack 1 or later
- Outlook on the Web
- New Outlook.com“
Outlook for Mac isn’t compatible.
The ‘Exchange account’ mention doesn’t tell the whole story. We use Exchange Server 2013 and yet the Office Store says ‘The app won’t work with your version of Exchange’.
It’s hard to understand why this add-on isn’t available to more, or all, Outlook users. The features available from the add-in pane aren’t tightly linked to Exchange Server features. In fact, the add-in has pretty simple functionality.
With these compatibility hassles, perhaps Microsoft is unsubtly trying to move people away from Exchange Server hosted by other companies. Redmond wants everyone to use Exchange Server on their servers via Office 365 hosting.
