A Tenant App Catalog in SharePoint Online is a specialized site collection that serves as a central repository for custom and third-party applications (apps) across your entire SharePoint environment. This allows you to store, manage, and distribute apps that users throughout your tenant can utilize on their individual SharePoint sites.
How to create the Tenant App Catalog
Follow these steps to create your App Catalog in SharePoint Online:
Prerequisites
Ensure you have SharePoint Online admin permissions. Only a Tenant Global Admin can initiate the App Catalog creation.
Verify that your SharePoint Online subscription supports App Catalogs, as some lower-tier plans may not include this feature.
Navigate to the SharePoint Admin Center
Go to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
In the left-hand menu, select SharePoint to access the SharePoint Admin Center.
Create the App Catalog Site Collection
In the SharePoint Admin Center, go to More features in the left sidebar.
Under Apps, select Open to manage apps.
If the App Catalog has not been previously created, SharePoint will automatically initiate its creation at this point.
This process establishes a central location for managing custom apps and extensions across SharePoint Online, significantly enhancing your organization's customization capabilities across sites.
Why use a Tenant App Catalog?
The Tenant App Catalog is a foundational feature for organizations using SharePoint Online who want to extend its functionality and provide a cohesive experience across their sites. It ensures a streamlined and secure way to deploy customizations tenant-wide without needing to add apps manually to each individual site.
This is particularly beneficial for organizations that leverage SharePoint heavily for collaboration, workflows, and productivity tools tailored to their specific needs. It's especially useful for:
Deploying standardized apps across departments.
Ensuring critical solutions (like custom document libraries, task management tools, or compliance modules) are readily available to everyone.
Key functions of a Tenant App Catalog
Centralized Management
Provides a single location for administrators to manage all available apps, simplifying governance and ensuring only approved solutions are deployed.
Wide Distribution of Apps
Apps can be deployed across multiple SharePoint site collections, making them available to all sites in the organization or limited to specific collections as needed.
Permissions and Security
Admins maintain control over app permissions, reviewing and granting them to safeguard the tenant against potential security risks.
Maintenance and Version Control
Facilitates updates and maintenance of deployed solutions, making it easier to track versions and manage app lifecycle.