Sharepoint 2013 : Integrating Apps for Office with SharePoint (part 1) - Standalone Apps for Office

8/17/2014 4:37:12 AM

You can integrate Apps for Office with SharePoint in two ways. One method is to configure Office clients to use SharePoint as the central location to browse the available Apps for Office internal to the enterprise. This is an IT/administrator-managed location for manifest files built in to SharePoint. Apps for Office managed this way can be considered standalone Apps for Office. These standalone apps only have SharePoint as the location for their manifest file but they have no other integration or dependency on SharePoint. This is the primary way that IT can centrally approve and manage Apps for Office they want to make available internally across the enterprise, whether the app was internally developed or purchased directly from a vendor.

Another way to integrate these is to incorporate Apps for Office into SharePoint and deploy them with an app for SharePoint. These might be documents or document templates that contain one or more Apps for Office, but they are associated specifically with an app for SharePoint that in turn provides a solution that specifically uses SharePoint artifacts, services, and APIs. The caveat is that Apps for Office deployed inside of an app for SharePoint are not discoverable through the Office client UI because the app for Office manifest file is deployed inside the AppWeb where the app for SharePoint is deployed. You will see an example of this in a later Try It Out.

Standalone Apps for Office

In the case of the standalone app for Office, you can navigate to the Options setting in one of the Office clients and add the URL for your Apps for Office catalog site on SharePoint. After this location is identified to the Office clients, when the user chooses to “See all” when inserting an app for Office, the client application UI shows these apps under the My Organization tab. The following Try It Out shows how a standalone app for Office is made available to enterprise users via SharePoint.

TRY IT OUT: Locating the Apps for Office Catalog in SharePoint Online

IT personnel can centrally manage the Apps for Office they want to make available to the enterprise via a special storage location for manifest files on SharePoint.

This exercise shows where to manage these files in Office 365 SharePoint Online and how to configure the Office clients to look to this location for Apps for Office. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Log in to portal.microsoftonline.com with your developer tenancy username and password.

2. On the Office 365 Preview admin center page, click the Service Settings link, then the Sites link, and the link under “Don’t see what you are looking for?”

3. On the SharePoint Administration Center page, click the Apps link, and then click the App Catalog link on the right side of the page.

4. Click the Apps for Office link to display the manifest storage location.

5. Copy the URL in the browser’s address bar.

6. In the center of the Apps for Office page, click the new item link.

7. Browse to the AppManifests folder on your local machine, (the one you created in the first Try It Out), select the FirstApp.xml file, click Open, click OK to upload it, and click Save.

8. Open either Word or Excel and log in to the Office client using your Office 365 developer tenancy username and password. The login to the Office client is in the upper-right corner of the client application. When prompted, choose the Organization or School option and enter your Office 365 credentials.

9. Set the Trusted Catalog Locations, except this time, paste in the URL you copied.

10. Before clicking the Add Catalog button, trim back the URL by removing everything from _layouts/... forward through the end of the URL. Your final URL should look something like https://[YourDeveloperTenancyDomain].sharepoint.com/sites/OSPAppCat/. Click the Add Catalog button.

11. Click the check box beside the newly added item so it will show up in the menu, and then click OK. Close and reopen the Office client so your change takes effect.

12. Return to your browser Apps for Office page. Click the new item icon, click Browse to find the manifest file you created in the first exercise, and upload it.

13. In the Office client you restarted, from the Insert menu, select Apps for Office ⇒ See All, and click My Organization. You might need to click the Refresh icon. Choose My First App and Insert it.

How It Works

The Apps for Office location on SharePoint is a custom document library specifically for storing manifest files. After an app for Office is built by either enterprise developers or purchased from a software vendor, the manifest file for the app for Office is given to IT. IT can then upload the manifest file to this SharePoint location and the app is then discoverable by any Office users when they browse the My Organization catalog from the client UI. Also, from this central location, IT can choose to revoke a manifest at any time, giving them complete control over what internally available Apps for Office end users have access to on the desktop.