Whether you have been following the guidance for Centralized Deployment of Web Add-ins or you do not have Office 365 and you want to create a SharePoint catalog for deployment, but realize it has limitations:
App catalogs on SharePoint do not support add-in features that are implemented in the
VersionOverridesnode of the add-in manifest, such as add-in commands.
You essentially try all the options on this page and find that side loading is the only method that will work. So you give it a shot, it works and now you are wondering how to deploy that to a larger group of users.
That is where this new tool that a fellow co-worker (Marty Andren) and I created will come in handy: The Web Add-in Side Loader Tool. Here is the link to the GitHub where it and it’s documentation are located:
Please let me know if you have any questions or issues with this tool.
[…] to do the steps manually, see the link below. For more information on this tool, please see my blog post and/or the GitHub […]
Hey Dave, thanks for the developing the tool. I have had some issues trying to start it. It simply won’t open.
It is a command line tool and does not have a form or UI.
So, you have to open CMD, and then CD to the folder where you unzipped it and then run the commands that way.
Is that what you are doing, and it is still not working?
Hi David, does your tool support side loading for Outlook? I tried to run it and it was successful, but I don’t see the add-in appearing in my Outlook.
Correct. This tool works only for Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
To sideload into Outlook you can open the browser to https://aka.ms/olksideload and from there you go to My Add-ins, and at the bottom you can upload your manifest.
It might take a few moments for it to make it into the Full Clients, but it is generally loaded immediately into Outlook for the Web.
Hi David, would it be possible to update your tool to sideload plugins to Outlook? I am working on a plugin that needs to be distributed across multiple PCs (50+). Using web page you provided in previous question seems to be impractical in my case. Old COM plugins allowed creating one msi installation that added plugins to Outlook, Word etc. I am trying to replicate such functionality for web plugins.
Unfortunately, it does not work the same way for Outlook. The way to side load in Outlook is currently manual: https://aka.ms/olksideload. You have to add custom and then browse to your manifest and install it that way.