How to distribute private office add-ins?

Question

We have a small excel app to complement our SaaS product. Standalone it's useless and because of that I have big problems getting it into the office app store. And actually it doesn't make any sense there, it's just for our users. But how else can users install this app easily?

It's written using HTML and JS with the Office.js library, so the app itself is basically just an xml manifest file pointing to a static url. There is documentation how to sideload an add in for testing:

• https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/testing/create-a-network-shared-folder-catalog-for-task-pane-and-content-add-ins
• https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/testing/sideload-office-add-ins-for-testing
• https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/testing/sideload-an-office-add-in-on-ipad-and-mac

Most of our users have a windows pc with excel installed locally. And creating a shared folder, .... is way beyond their capabilities. I hoped that I could somehow configure nginx as webdav or similar to add it to excel as a trusted catalog url, however I didn't find any documentation stating what this catalog url can be, except a network share.

Regarding mac and iPad, I'm even more puzzled. I could provide them with a simple script / app they'd need to execute in order to get the manifest copied to the right location.

But I guess what I'm really wondering, isn't there any "official" way to distribute an office add on which is only interesting for a few people - who are NOT in your organisation - keep in mind, there is no common share point server. And if there isn't what is the friendliest way for the user you'd suggest?

Update:

To make it maybe easier to grasp - the application is called WebBSC and basically makes it easier to perform some tasks, which usually used to be done in Excel before. But since all of our customers have the original data in excel, we created an add in for importing these data (this might not be just one time, but can also be periodically on a monthly basis) - This is why the add-in doesn't really make sense in the store, on the other hand we don't share any Office365 or Sharepoint / exchange account with our customers, it's just a simple SaaS app.

Answer 1

Eric is partially correct: just 6 months ago, side-loading and private SharePoint catalogs would have been the only way.

However, there is a new "Office 365 Admin Center" that makes it much easier to deploy internal add-ins, and does not require SharePoint. Please see https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Deploy-Office-Add-ins-in-the-Office-365-Admin-Center-737e8c86-be63-44d7-bf02-492fa7cd9c3f