SharePoint Online App Catalog In Office 365

App Catalogs: What are they?

App Catalogs are site collections within a web application where we can publish Custom developed Apps or third party Apps for use/reuse within that particular web application. Publishing of Apps to App Catalog is as simple as uploading a document to one of the document libraries. Once the App is available in the App Catalog, the site owner can add the App to the site by navigating to the Site Contents and thereby customize the site by adding a specific functionality available through the App.

Relation between App and App Catalog can be summed as:

Relation
Who can create an App Catalog?

You need to be a Share Point Online Administrator in order to create an App Catalog. However the permissions to access App Catalog so as to upload and manage App and App requests can be delegated to users by assigning Site Permissions.

How many App Catalog can be created?

App Catalog is a special site collection specific to a web application. So only one App Catalog is allowed per Web Application. Thus a farm can have more than one App Catalog depending upon the number of Web Applications.

How to create an App Catalog?

An App Catalog can be created in SharePoint Online from the Office 365 Admin Centre. Go to Apps and click on App Catalog,

Catalog

Since there are no App Catalogs created we will chose ‘Create a new app catalog site’ option,

Create a new app catalog site

Click on OK,

ok

Enter the Title, Web Address, Time Zone, Language, Administrator and Resource Quota values. Click on OK.

values

Thus the new App Catalog Site Collection has been created. Let’s get a first-hand look at the app catalog site,

site

Now if we go to Admin Centre -> Apps -> App Catalog we won’t be redirected to the app catalog creation page instead we will be navigated to the App Catalog Site which we have created.

spo

As you can see by default 3 libraries are available with the App Catalog:

  • Apps for SharePoint
  • Apps for Office
  • App Requests

Now you can use this App Catalog site so as to distribute the App for Share Point & Office.