App Catalog in SharePoint 2013

Introduction

In SharePoint 2013 there is a special site collection that holds the apps that is called the App Catalog. There cannot be more than one App Catalog site collection in a web application or each web application can have only one App Catalog site collection. There can be multiple App Catalogs in a farm.

How to create App Catalog

1. Open Central Administration.

2. Click on "Apps" in the quick launch bar.

3. Click on "Manage App Catalog" available under the App Management section.



4. Select the web application from the drop down for which the App Catalog site collection is to be created.

5. Select "Create a new App Catalog site" and then click on "Ok".



6. Enter the Title, Description, URL and Site Collection Administrator and then click on "Create".



7. The App Catalog site will be created successfully.



8. By default the following document libraries will be available in the App Catalog site.

• Apps for SharePoint
• Apps for Office
• App Requests

Add an app for SharePoint

1. Navigate to the App Catalog site that we have created in the previous section.

2. Click on "Apps for SharePoint".

3. Click on the new app.



4. Choose the app file (will be available in the following folder of your project: "\bin\Debug\app.publish\MyFirstSharePointHostedApp.app") and then click on "Ok".

5. Enter the app properties and then click on "Save".






6. Now this app will be available for all the sites within this web application. Please refer to http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Blogs/12299/how-to-add-an-app-from-an-app-catalog-in-sharepoint-2013-sit.aspx  to add this app to the SharePoint site.

Summary

Thus in this article we have seen App Catalogs and how to create them in SharePoint 2013.