Welcome to an article on “How to Enable App SideLoading on your Non-Developer Office 365 Site Collection on Azure”. Now for people who are not aware of what side loading is, let’s talk about that first.
App SideLoading
App Sideloading is the ability to install a SharePoint app directly into a site to explicitly bypass the regular governance controls of SharePoint. When you want an app directly to be deployed on Office 365 site rather than making it a package and uploading it to the app catalog, we use this feature. These apps are developer features that are just used for test purposes.
The developer site is used for app development which is used for deploying the solutions before adding them to the store so this feature is mostly activated on the Dev site but if not and if you want to activate this feature on another site collection, follow the article below and learn how to do it.
Steps
- Install SPO Management Shell
- Open your code editor and paste the code below.
$programFiles = [environment]::getfolderpath("programfiles")
add-type -Path $programFiles'\SharePoint Online Management Shell\' + `
'Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll'
Write-Host `
'To enable SharePoint app sideLoading, ' + `
'enter Site Url, username and password'
$siteurl = Read-Host 'Site Url'
$username = Read-Host "User Name"
$password = Read-Host -AsSecureString 'Password'
if ($siteurl -eq '') {
$siteurl = 'SiteUrl'
$username = 'Username'
$password = ConvertTo-SecureString -String 'Password' `
-AsPlainText -Force
}
$outfilepath = $siteurl -replace ':', '_' -replace '/', '_'
try {
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext]$cc = `
New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($siteurl)
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials]$spocreds = `
New-Object `
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($username, $password)
$cc.Credentials = $spocreds
$sideLoadingEnabled = `
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.appcatalog]::IsAppSideloadingEnabled($cc);
$cc.ExecuteQuery()
if($sideLoadingEnabled.value -eq $false) {
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow `
'SideLoading feature is not enabled on the site:' $siteurl
$site = $cc.Site;
$sideLoadingGuid = `
new-object System.Guid "AE3A1339-61F5-4f8f-81A7-ABD2DA956A7D"
$site.Features.Add($sideLoadingGuid, $false, `
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.FeatureDefinitionScope]::None);
$cc.ExecuteQuery();
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green `
'SideLoading feature enabled on site' $siteurl
} else {
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green `
'SideLoading feature is already enabled on site' $siteurl
}
} catch {
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Red `
'Error encountered when trying to enable SideLoading feature' `
$siteurl, ':' $Error[0].ToString();
}
- On this code just add the following inputs: Site URL, Username & Password
- Once you update them, save the file as a .ps1 file
- Run this .ps1 file on the installed SPO Management Shell
- Kindly remember you should be a tenant admin to run this script
Once the execution is completed the App SideLoading feature will be enabled on the site and now you will be able to deploy the app directly from Visual Studio.
This error is common for all developers trying to do RnD on App Development through Visual Studio on Office 365 Apps. Kindly be a part of the article chain to see more app development articles in my upcoming articles.
Until then, keep reading & keep learning!!