4. Publishing the Add-in

This chapter describes how to make the Outlook add-in available to end users. The preferred distribution channel is centralized deployment through the Microsoft 365 admin center; publishing to Microsoft AppSource is covered as an alternative for public distribution.

The release bundle ships as a single ZIP (toa-client-<version>.zip) that expands into three parts:

• a static site/ folder (task pane + manifest.xml) that gets published to an HTTPS origin of the operator’s choosing,

• an apply-host helper script that rewrites the one per-customer value baked into the manifest,

• a README.txt with the short version of the procedure.

The task-pane JavaScript itself is customer-agnostic: it calls the server via a relative /api/ base path, so the only artefact that needs per-customer customisation is manifest.xml. See Hosting the task pane for the reverse-proxy setup that makes that work.

• 4.1. Add-in manifest
  • 4.1.1. The host placeholder
  • 4.1.2. Values that change per release
  • 4.1.3. Values that are stable across releases
• 4.2. Hosting the task pane
  • 4.2.1. Required properties of the origin
  • 4.2.2. Example nginx configuration
  • 4.2.3. TLS and certificates
  • 4.2.4. Cache and versioning
• 4.3. Centralized deployment (Microsoft 365)
  • 4.3.1. Prerequisites
  • 4.3.2. Upload procedure
  • 4.3.3. Verifying the deployment
  • 4.3.4. Updating an already deployed add-in
  • 4.3.5. Removing the add-in
• 4.4. Publishing to AppSource