Office 365 Centralized Deployment service

Just recently Microsoft announced the general availability of the Office 365 centralized deployment service. I have tested it and it really makes deploying Office Add-ins super easy. The add-in configuration and deployment can be managed through the Office 365 portal or using PowerShell.

For a quick overview watch the video “How to Deploy Office Add-ins within Your Organization”.

Now since I like using PowerShell, here’s a quick example how to enable and deploy an Office Add-in.

First download and install the Office 365 Centralized Deployment PowerShell module. Get-Command -Module OrganizationAddInService shows you all the available cmdlets

Within the Office Store I have found an add-in that i want to deploy called the “Geographic Heat Map”

https://store.office.com/en-us/app.aspx?assetid=WA103304320&sourcecorrid=cdbeb6de-e8c1-4e8c-98d4-de57419a0f3d&searchapppos=1&ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&appredirect=false

From the URL extract the Office store asset id of the add-in

Let’s take a look at the add-in details

The add-in is still not enabled, so let’s do that now.

 

Now lets open Excel, and see if the add-in is available.

and there we go.

I told you, it’s super easy.

More information here:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/P574

https://blogs.office.com/2017/05/31/announcing-general-availability-of-the-office-365-centralized-deployment-service/

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Deploy-custom-business-applications-with-ease-with-the-Office/ba-p/73430

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55267

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-the-Centralized-Deployment-PowerShell-cmdlets-to-manage-add-ins-94f4e86d-b8e5-42dd-b558-e6092f830ec9