We have been deploying our final product to the end users by directly providing them the excel file with the VBA code embedded in it.
We have now completely migrated the same code base using JavaScript Excel Add-In. Now, while using JavaScript, we want to provide same deployment experience to end users. The experience should be such that they just need to take our excel template and get started right away. The problem is: 1. JavaScript is hosted on our server 2. We cannot embed the JavaScript Add-In in the excel file directly.
To provide the same deployment experience, we tried the following solutions. 1. Provide Add-In via Network Shared Folder. The deployment isn’t seemless though. Firstly, we need to setup the shared folder catalog. Secondly, ensure that all Office 2016 installations need to pick Add-Ins from this Trusted Add-In Catalog URL. This second step needs to be repeated on each end user’s PC individually. This seems to be a tedious task for end user. 2. We can provide access to Product using SharePoint based Add-In catalogs but many of the end users do not have SharePoint subscriptions.
So my question – is there any way to make this Excel template deployable and shareable across multiple end users a. With the Add-In embedded into the Excel template itself. b. Without letting user grind through the tedious task of setting up deployment catalogs.
Ultimate goal is to let our product development team bother about development and deployment and let user simply use Add-In.
