How to distribute private office add-ins?

Asked 25/10, 2016 at 23:21 Answered 27/10, 2016 at 0:43

Solved ms-office office365 office-addins

We have a small excel app to complement our SaaS product. Standalone it's useless and because of that I have big problems getting it into the office app store. And actually it doesn't make any sense there, it's just for our users. But how else can users install this app easily?

It's written using HTML and JS with the Office.js library, so the app itself is basically just an xml manifest file pointing to a static url. There is documentation how to sideload an add in for testing:

Most of our users have a windows pc with excel installed locally. And creating a shared folder, .... is way beyond their capabilities. I hoped that I could somehow configure nginx as webdav or similar to add it to excel as a trusted catalog url, however I didn't find any documentation stating what this catalog url can be, except a network share.

Regarding mac and iPad, I'm even more puzzled. I could provide them with a simple script / app they'd need to execute in order to get the manifest copied to the right location.

But I guess what I'm really wondering, isn't there any "official" way to distribute an office add on which is only interesting for a few people - who are NOT in your organisation - keep in mind, there is no common share point server. And if there isn't what is the friendliest way for the user you'd suggest?

Update:

To make it maybe easier to grasp - the application is called WebBSC and basically makes it easier to perform some tasks, which usually used to be done in Excel before. But since all of our customers have the original data in excel, we created an add in for importing these data (this might not be just one time, but can also be periodically on a monthly basis) - This is why the add-in doesn't really make sense in the store, on the other hand we don't share any Office365 or Sharepoint / exchange account with our customers, it's just a simple SaaS app.

Scarlettscarp answered 25/10, 2016 at 23:21 Comment(1)

Hi Peter, I have exact same problem. Can you let me know how did you manage to resolve this issue? I cannot ask users to create shared folder, as it requires admin access . I also tried to place manifest.xml file on one of our web servers and tried to paste that path under catalog url with trusted center settings, but addin doesn't show up. – Guesswarp 24/3, 2021 at 12:30

Eric is partially correct: just 6 months ago, side-loading and private SharePoint catalogs would have been the only way.

However, there is a new "Office 365 Admin Center" that makes it much easier to deploy internal add-ins, and does not require SharePoint. Please see https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Deploy-Office-Add-ins-in-the-Office-365-Admin-Center-737e8c86-be63-44d7-bf02-492fa7cd9c3f

Clava answered 27/10, 2016 at 0:43 Comment(7)

Thx for the link, unfortunately I don't think it helps us, since we want to distribute the add-in to our customers with whom we don't share any other common accounts including office 365 - maybe I missed something, but I didn't find in the documentation how people outside of your organisation would be able to install it. - I've updated the question with more specific info - thx – Scarlettscarp 27/10, 2016 at 12:10

Peter, thanks for the clarification. This is somewhat of a known gap in the platform to date – we have good public distribution through the Store, and good internal distribution through this new Office 365 Admin Center. But to be admittedly don't have a great solution to something that's in the middle ground. Folks are aware of it for the longer term, but for your purposes, I think your best bet is still the Store. The store is OK with having add-ins that are meant only for specific audience. Just make sure to give the store a test account when you submit, so they can see the add-in in action – Clava 28/10, 2016 at 1:7

Michael, we also would love the ability to publish to a specific audience (multiple companies) where internal distribution is not possible. How can we publish to Office Store, but limit access (not appear in public store listing)? – Cesar 31/10, 2016 at 1:7

@MichaelZlatkovsky-Microsoft Does the "Office 365 Admin Center" work when a company uses a BYOD model? – Branchiopod 30/5, 2017 at 23:50

@MichaelZlatkovsky-Microsoft years later there is still no solution to this problem? We build tools for companies and we would like to offer some of them as office add-in, but it seems that you do not support that in a reasonable way – Plasmodium 19/5, 2020 at 16:15

@FedericoTomassetti, I have since moved on to a different team within Microsoft. I recommend re-asking the question as a separate StackOverflow thread, so that the request bubbles up to folks on the product team. – Clava 19/5, 2020 at 20:5

@MichaelZlatkovsky-Microsoft I can hardly find any information on this. Also facing the same problem of offering a self hosted Office web add-in. If I understand the documentation correctly, the add-in runtime ,api limitations and SSL should provide some sense of security for global admins to consent? I am speaking from a customer standpoint where they are only familiar with codesigned native add-ins and marking as trusted. – Gibert 22/4, 2022 at 8:21

Unfortunately side-loading or using a private catalog are the only methods available for loading an add-in that's not published in the Office Store.

Add-in's can also be sideloaded in Mac and iPad, see https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/testing/sideload-an-office-add-in-on-ipad-and-mac.

Cuneal answered 26/10, 2016 at 15:44 Comment(0)

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