Viable way to deploy/update internal Office Add-Ins for Excel 2016?

Question

I've built an office add-in for excel using office.js, angular2, and a manifest file on a share drive. It adds a new ribbon to excel, with custom icons that when clicked either perform various functions or open a taskpane which loads a web app in excel. I'm wondering if there's a clean, viable way I can distribute it to a few people internally who are also running Excel 2016.

This site lists options for deploying and publishing these add-ins, but it seems geared towards big projects/large organizations. It lists 5 options:

1. Sideloading - this is what I currently use for development and feel like it may be my only option for distributing it internally, but this also seems problematic because it seems that when I edit or update my manifest file, each user has to know about it and then manually re-load the add-in to get the most up to date and working version.
2. Centralized deployment - I think this is for Office 365 which I don't have. I also do not have Office 2016 ProPlus.
3. Office Store - This tool is to be strictly internal so this option will not work.
4. SharePoint catalog - This option does not support add-in commands so I can't do this either.
5. Exchange server - Not sure about this, assuming this is for Outlook add-ins?

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So, I guess I'm wondering:

1. Is sideloading my only option?
2. And, if so, is there a clean way I can distribute an excel add-in internally using sideloading while being able to maintain it, extend it, and push updates to it regularly?

Thanks.

Answer 1

share drive and side loading seem like the only options you have. I strongly recommend you to use centralized deployment with Office 365 as this is the only way you can distribute your Add-In to specific users or groups within your organization.

Answer 2

You can use ClickOnce.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc176036(v=vs.90).aspx

You can set an internal IP as target. We have a .NET plugin working on Office 2010.

Answer 3

You can use Sideloading option but you can host your angular website in github or of your choice and change the source location and support url in the xml file to you domain.

see the below example. I have deployed my app in github with url "s1728k.github.io/myblog" and I am updating my xml file as below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <!--Created:cb85b80c-f585-40ff-8bfc-12ff4d0e34a9-->
    <OfficeApp xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/appforoffice/1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:type="TaskPaneApp">
      <Id>040c034b-e3c2-4ab7-8939-e8fc38a51754</Id>
      <Version>1.0.0.0</Version>
      <ProviderName>Microsoft</ProviderName>
      <DefaultLocale>en-US</DefaultLocale>
      <DisplayName DefaultValue="Quarterly Sales Report Sample" />
      <Description DefaultValue="Quarterly Sales Report Sample"/>
      <Capabilities>
        <Capability Name="Workbook" />
      </Capabilities>
      <DefaultSettings>
        <SourceLocation DefaultValue="s1728k.github.io/myblog" />
      </DefaultSettings>
      <Permissions>ReadWriteDocument</Permissions>
<Dictionary>

</Dictionary>
     <SupportUrl DefaultValue="s1728k.github.io/myblog" />
      <IconUrl DefaultValue="https://athlonecommunityradio.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/placeholder.png" />
</OfficeApp>