Tenant App Catalog vs Site Collection App Catalog

Modern experience solutions are created every day and installing them on Office 365 can be challenging and can create confusion for users. How do have this solution on this site and not on another one? In this article, it’s reviewed both methods available to install solutions on SharePoint and explain what is best for what.

Tenant APP Catalog

Where is available

• SharePoint Framework Extensions are deployed on the tenant but not activated on the Site Collection unless you activate them on the site.
• SharePoint Framework Web Parts solutions are deployed globally across all site collections.
• One per tenant.

Permissions

To create you need Tenant Global Admin Permission but once the Tenant app catalog has been added to Tenant the administrators of that Site Collection can manage apps for the Tenant. This created once per tenant.

How to create the Tenant APP Catalog?

1. Sign in on your SharePoint Admin Center (https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com)
2. If you have the new SharePoint admin center open, go to the Classic Mode.
3. In the left pane, select apps, and then select App Catalog.
4. If the App Catalog site doesn’t open, select Create a new app catalog site, and then select OK.

   

5. On the Create App Catalog Site Collection page, enter the required information, and then select OK.

   

Site Collection APP Catalog

Where is available

• SharePoint Framework Extensions are deployed on the Site Collection but need to be activated on the Site.
• SharePoint Framework Web Parts solutions are deployed only in the selected site collection.
• One APP Catalog per site collection.

Permissions

You need Tenant Global Admin Permission only one-time during setup. You will need site collection admin permissions after.

Once the site collection has been added to the approved list of site collection app catalog, site collection administrators can manage apps under that site collection

Priority

If you have the same solution install on both app catalogs the Site app catalog will have priority over Tenant app catalog

How to create Site Collection APP Catalog

SharePoint Online Management Shell

Connect-SPOService -Url https://Contoso-admin.sharepoint.com
Add-SPOSiteCollectionAppCatalog -Site “https://Contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/contoso”

SharePointPnP PowerShell 

Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://Contoso-admin.sharepoint.com
Add-PnPSiteCollectionAppCatalog -Site “https://Contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/contoso”

Office 365 CLI

spo login https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com
spo site appcatalog add --url https://contoso.sharepoint/sites/site

Conclusion

If you’re developing an app installing creating the App catalog for the site collection will help during the development and will prevent other sites to have access to the solution during the development phase. Once the development finish deploy on the Tenant APP Catalog will make the organization have access to the solution. If you intend to keep developing the solution, you can use a site collection to develop the new version of the solution.

References

• https://pnp.github.io/office365-cli/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/sharepoint/overview?view=sharepoint-ps
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/general-development/site-collection-app-catalog