Centralised Office 365 Add in deployments with PowerShell

The three common Outlook add-ins I suggest be deployed across the entire organisation are:

1. Report Message

2. Message Header Analyzer

3. FindTime

You can allow users to deploy these individually but that opens up potential security concerns if users can install their own add ins. The better way is to deploy these centrally for all everyone.

You can do this using the Admin center in Office 365 but an even smarter way is to use PowerShell to do this, especially if you are going to install these add ins in multiple tenants.

To achieve this with PowerShell you are firstly going to have to go download and install the:

Office 365 Centralized Deployment PowerShell

which will allow you to deploy add ins using PowerShell commands.

Once you have installed this software go and fire up PowerShell command editor. You’ll need to connect/login to this service using the command:

Connect-OrganizationAddInService

but I’ve made connecting to the service easy for you by uploading a connection script to my GitHub repository here:

https://github.com/directorcia/Office365/blob/master/o365-connect-ctrldply.ps1

The thing to note about the connection is that this services doesn’t appear to support MFA identities so you’ll need to use an admin account that doesn’t have MFA enabled on it.

Once you have connected you’ll need to install the add in into the tenant using the command:

New-OrganizationAddIn

when you do this you’ll need to know the ‘Asset ID’ of the add in, which you will find in the URL for that add in in the store. The asset id appears in the form of WA104381180 for example. However, rather than you hunting around for these I’ve got them for you here:

Report Message = WA104381180

Message Header Analyzer = WA104005406

Findtime = WA104379803

The full command looks like:

New-OrganizationAddIn -AssetId ‘WA104381180’ -Locale ‘en-US’ -ContentMarket ‘en-US’

make sure you change the Locale and ContentMarket options to suit your environment.

You’ll then need to enable the add in within the tenant using the command:

Set-OrganizationAddIn

for this you’ll need to the ‘Product Id’ of the add in. You can find that by running the command:

Get-OrganizationAddIn

Here are the Product Id’s for my recommended add ins:

Report Message  = 6046742c-3aee-485e-a4ac-92ab7199db2e

Message Header Analyzer = 62916641-fc48-44ae-a2a3-163811f1c945

FindTime = 9758a0e2-7861-440f-b467-1823144e5b65

The full command to enable the add in within the tenant looks like:

Set-OrganizationAddIn -ProductId 6046742c-3aee-485e-a4ac-92ab7199db2e -Enabled $true

Finally, you’ll need to assign the add in to users. In this case, I believe these add ins should be mandatory for all users. Thus you run the command:

Set-OrganizationAddInAssignments -ProductId 6046742c-3aee-485e-a4ac-92ab7199db2e -AssignToEveryone $true

to do this.

Now you are all done and those add ins will roll out to every user in your tenant.

To read more about the PowerShell options available to you with PowerShell and centralised add in deployment check out this from Microsoft:

Use the Centralized Deployment PowerShell cmdlets to manage add-ins

I have also made the full deployment scripts for these three add ins available on my GitHub repository to save you time. You’ll find that script here:

https://github.com/directorcia/Office365/blob/master/o365-addin-deploy.ps1

That should make deploying your favourite Office add ins into Office 365 easier.