Now that we have seen the theory, let's go
to the lab environment and see how
customizations are deployed inside the
SharePoint Online app catalog, both at the
tenant level, as well as at the site
collection level. We are now in the demo
environment and let me open up the
SharePoint Online admin center. Now how do
we know if we have an app catalog? If your
tenant is new, it doesn't come pre-created
by default. My tenant already has one and
the name is pretty easy; it's AppCatalog;
however, if you're not sure, the easiest
way is to go inside Classic features. You
will have Apps as an option here. Click on
Open, and then the first option is the App
Catalog. Once you click on it, if it
doesn't exist, it will bring you to a page
where you can create it. If it exists, it
will simply redirect you to your existing
app catalog as it did for me in the demo
environment, and remember you can only
have one per tenant. I went here into Apps
for SharePoint, and I actually
pre-downloaded two different applications;
one of them is the SharePoint Framework
Fantastic 40, and the other one is the
SharePoint Starter Kit. So let's go for
this one; I actually have the links in
this file that you can download with the
exercise files if you want to download the
same ones as I did. They're amazing
solutions, but we're only going to use
them to test. So let me drag and drop this
in here. It will take a few seconds, and
after that it will ask me, do you trust
this solution? And it gives me the name of
the solution. I will click on Deploy
because I trust it. I will click on
Refresh; it might take a few seconds,
depending on how big the application is,
and if we go here we can see that it's
enabled, it's deployed, and we can also go
to the properties if we want to see more.
So let me go into Properties. I can add a
description if I want to. I can change the
icon. I can add information about the apps
such as images, things like that, and I
can select if I want it to be shown in
featured or not. I'm just going to leave
it like that for now, and we're going to
go in this site called Globomantics
Migration so we can actually add it to our
site. So in order to add it, I'll just
refresh. I'll wait for the New button to
be active. I will click on App, and all of
the apps from the app catalog will either
be shown here in the Noteworthy section,
if you have decided to show them there in
the Apps you can add, but really those are
all of the apps together. Only the ones
from the app catalog will always be shown
in the From Your Organization category. I
want to add the SharePoint Framework
Fantastic 40 WebParts. Let me click on it.
Now it brings us to the old Site contents
page and you see I have the SharePoint
Framework Fantastic 40 WebParts, which has
been deployed. I can then go inside any
page, and in this case I'll simply go and
edit a page since I know this page is
quite a few, well, 40 WebParts as the name
says. I will click on plus here to add a
WebPart, and I will see quite a few of the
WebParts like the Accordion one, the 3D
Carousel, from that solution. And now
because I deployed it at the tenant level
app catalog, it will be available inside
all of the different sites, but what if I
want to have a solution that's only
available in a few sites? Well, then I
have to do it at the site level or site
collection level. So in this case we're
going to take this other communication
site and we're going to enable this site
collection app catalog on it. First, let
me go into Site contents, and you will see
that I only have the default libraries and
lists that got created. Now let's go into
PowerShell. I have already connected to
SharePoint Online so I'll just simply
Get-SPOSite, save it inside a variable,
and then Add-SPOSiteCollectionAppCatalog
on this site. What will this have done if
I refresh the page now? It will have added
an Apps for SharePoint list here that I
can now go inside. It's very similar to
the Apps for SharePoint inside the app
catalog, but here I'm really inside the
site collection. So let me go and drag the
other solution, the SharePoint Starter Kit
inside this library. This one is a bit,
it's quite a lot bigger than the previous
one; it's 28 megabytes because it includes
quite a few features so it might take one
to three minutes for it to upload and
deploy, but it seems it was pretty fast.
Do I trust it? Yes, I trust it so let's
click on Deploy, and then let's click on
Refresh so we can see if it got deployed
or not, and yes, it got deployed. Awesome!
So now let's take a look, if we go back to
the Home and then we try to add an app,
and see what it looks like. So I'll go
into New, I'll go inside Apps, and I will
simply go to From Your Organization, and
you see I have this Starter Kit SPFx
Fantastic 40 and the other app I had my
app catalog, which is the Corporate News
App. If I go on another site, let's say
Globomantics Migration, and I go to create
a new app, I go into From Your
Organization, you see I don't have the
starter kit because that was deployed in
that sites app catalog so it's not
available in this other site collection.
That is it for this demo. We have looked
at how to deploy an app inside the tenant
level app catalog, how to enable the site
collection app catalog for a certain site
collection, and how to deploy an app in
the site collection app catalog. Now let's
go back to the slides and take a look at how do we manage apps?