Chapter 8
Distributing SharePoint 2013 Apps
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:
- Distributing apps via the SharePoint Store
- Licensing and managing apps in the Store
WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER
The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-1118495845.html on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:
- SharePointAppPackage.app
So you have built the next million-dollar idea into a SharePoint app and you want to make sure the world buys it. The SharePoint Store is a good starting point for making sure the largest number of people sees your app. But how do you take your app and distribute it through the SharePoint Store? What are your licensing options? How can you manage your apps after they are out in the wild being used by millions of happy users? This chapter provides guidance and answers for these questions.
Over the past five years, the app phenomenon has taken the world by storm. The concept of an app isn’t new — it has been around for decades, ever since the first personal computer. What makes the app concept so popular today is the ease of finding and buying low-cost and (mostly) high-value apps easily and quickly. Today that concept centers mostly on smartphones; however, ecosystems are quickly developing around other types of computing, such as social computing and gaming. Although they are not the first to the game enterprise, software vendors are starting to take notice and make sure they offer their users additional capabilities and options not available out of the box with their products through reusable, additive, and easily discovered components — also known as apps. Many people are already used to paying for apps because of their familiarity with the concept from the smartphone world, and vendors are benefiting from this familiarity by taking a percentage of the sale for themselves. The marketplace is selling access to their user base and benefitting financially from it. To warrant the marketplace provider taking a percentage, a compelling and sizable audience must exist for the developers.
Enter SharePoint — one of the most widely used and popular enterprise software platforms on the planet today. Hundreds of millions of licenses to it have been sold. Thousands of huge organizations use it to do everything from team collaboration to building their Internet site. One of the challenges independent software vendors (ISVs) have had is getting their products out in front of all those users. Many have done very well at this challenge and profited immensely from it, but many haven’t. Microsoft is finally letting developers and ISVs get a front-and-center stage for their products right within the product itself — the SharePoint Store (see Figure 8-1).
The SharePoint Store offers users and IT departments the ability to find, buy, install, and manage apps. IT can configure the store so it is in charge of what is purchased, or it can let users do the same. As you have read in this book, the app model offers a tightly controlled method for integrating with SharePoint that preserves the sanctity of organizations’ data while also allowing them to offer additional capabilities and services that users might want.
This chapter delves into how you can apply, submit, publish, and manage apps in the SharePoint Store. This marketplace is open to everyone, and Microsoft actively encourages not only large ISVs, but also smaller independent developers to build and submit apps to the Store. All you need is a great idea, a bit of time, and a store account.