I have an Outlook add-in ("Apps for Office" type, i.e. HTML, not VSTO or COM) that is published in the Office store.
Some users have complained that the add-in appears grayed out (GitHub issue). I cannot reproduce the issue on my machine. The "Microsoft Office Alerts" event log on the user's machine shows only "Activated App" events.
How can I diagnose the problem (logging etc)?
Fiddler is usually a good tool for tracing the web requests. Otherwise there are general guidelines for troubleshooting loading issues here: https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/testing/testing-and-troubleshooting.
For issues loading your add-in, including run-time logging, see here: https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/testing/troubleshoot-manifest
Also check the local cache for the manifest; see: https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/outlook/troubleshoot-outlook-add-in-activation
Related
This error **Add-in Error** We couldn't connect to the 'Office Store' catalog server for this add-in. is shown when user tries to access the add-in.
See image
Steps to reproduce:
Open new excel file
Download the app from app-store.
Also tried removing the add-in and then re-adding it from the store but the same error persists.
Office won't be able to connect to the add-ins catalog unless there's a live internet connection, so when you see this error message, start your browser and make sure you can bring up a page or two that you haven't visited before. Or better yet, try to navigate to the add-in's web page. You can also try using any troubleshooting tools like Fiddler to see what happens under the hood.
This may be for a variety of reasons:
No internet connection
Blocked by firewall
Access disabled by a security policy
Add-in installation disabled by an administrator for Office applications
We have a Excel Web Addin, that was deployed to a group of users using the Office 365 Admin Center. But the add-in is not visible in Excel 2016 (Version 1803,Build 9126.2275, Click to Deploy) for those users.
Fiddler trace shows the following when the user tries to refresh the "Admin Managed" add-in dialog box.
Fiddler Trace
<MessageText>User must have a mailbox for name resolution operations.</MessageText>
<ResponseCode>ErrorNameResolutionNoMailbox</ResponseCode>
I also came across this post
"No add-ins currently available." when deploying add-in using Centralized Deployment
that talks about enabling Exchange. I am not sure what that really means.
So any help is appreciated in understanding the issue and resolution.
Thanks
-kudlur
Based on the error message, I'd assume you're having issues with users not being assigned mailboxes, which are required to enable Centralized Deployed add-ins.
Could you try running through the compatibility checking steps outlines here? It will help provide more detail on the exact issue.
Download the compatibility checker here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55270
Run the compatibility checker Start an elevated PowerShell.exe window.
Run the \Import-Module O365CompatibilityChecker\ command.
Run the \Invoke-CompatibilityCheck\ command, which prompts you for TenantDomain (for example, TailspinToysIncorporated.onmicrosoft.com) and TenantAdmin credentials, and then requests consent.
You can also find more ways to debug in this help article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-ie/office365/admin/manage/centralized-deployment-of-add-ins?redirectSourcePath=%252farticle%252fDetermine-if-Centralized-Deployment-of-add-ins-works-for-your-Office-365-organization-b4527d49-4073-4b43-8274-31b7a3166f92&view=o365-worldwide#BKMK_UserAndGroupAssignments?omkt=de-CH&ui=de-DE&rs=de-CH&ad=CH
Thanks, Alan
I've been going through the process of submitting a JS based add-in to the Outlook store through Microsoft's Seller Dashboard and I'm receiving the feedback:
Requirement:
Your app or add-in must not stop responding, end unexpectedly, or contain programming errors.
Error:
We encountered an error while testing your add-in.
When authenticating your add-in, we receive an error message and are unable to load your add-in.
Unfortunately there's no other information related to this request making it hard to debug or understand what is happening.
We've tested successfully on Outlook 2016 (Windows 10), Outlook 2016 (Mac OS), outlook.com (on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and the latest version of IE) and other than a few peculiarities with how the desktop versions of Outlook handle things everything is working.
The only thing I can think of that may be triggering this is that we have a whitelist CORS approach. Currently we've whitelisted the domain our add-in is served from, but if Microsoft is bundling our add-in we'll need to whitelist the location it's eventually served from.
Is it likely that it's a CORS issue?
If so, what domains should we be whitelisting?
If not, how do we debug this given it works on outlook.com, Outlook 2016, and Outlook for MacOS when side loading from the same manifest xml document we're submitting through the seller dashboard?
Unfortunately the Office Store review team will not give many details that could be helpful. You have to provide as much testing information as possible in order for them to succeed. I had a similar loading issue at one point and they did not even bother to provide the browser type or version.
A good strategy is to output as much debugging information as you can to the browser console from your add-in's key functions. If you ask them to provide these logs in your testing notes they may be able to do that for you.
Note that the location your add-in is being served from is always your web server; Microsoft just hosts the manifest for the Office Store.
The error message that the screenshot is illustrating that the webpage your manifest is directing Outlook to load is not available. This means that when Microsoft is attempting to validate the add-in, the web server that the add-in is pointing to is returning a 404 HTTP Response.
Let's take Excel for example. In Excel 2016, when I select an add-in in the STORE, after clicking on Trust It, will the code (.html, .js files) of the add-in be downloaded or installed on my machine?
In other words, have the add-ins under MY ADD-INS been already installed on my machine, such that i could load and run them without Internet (if an add-in does not send or receive special data to or from Internet)?
I am asking this question, because i want to know if a basic add-in always requires Internet access to work.
As Eric mentions, Office add-ins are indeed web based. However, to add a bit to his answer:
While you definitely need a one-time access to fetch the manifest and the original HTML/JS/CSS files, if your add-in is not using license checking (it's free) and does not require web services, you should be able to make a website that uses standard offlining techniques to load with no internet connection after the first time.
I tried it out real quick with pointing a manifest at http://html5demos.com/offlineapp. After loading it once and then disconnecting my internet, I was still able to load that page.
Hope this helps,
~ Michael
Yes, the new Office add-ins are web-based. They are all defined - and installed - by a manifest file which specifies the URL location of the web source files. These are always hosted on the provider's web server and are not cached for offline use. The licensing system used by most add-ins (the ones that aren't free) requires a connection to the provider's web server which in turns needs to verify the user's license against the Office Verification Licensing Service. If offline use was enabled users could use a trial license in perpetuity without the provider being aware.
We have a brand new SharePoint 2007 Intranet farm running on new 64-bit hardware with lots of processor and memory. We are using Kerberos for security and have carefully followed all the written guidance from Microsoft and blogs to configuring Kerberos and Excel Services correctly. Generally everything is running great.
Currently we can add Excel Web Access web parts on SharePoint team site pages and connect them up to SQL 2005 Analysis Cubes for use with doing Pivot Tables, Graphs, etc... As part of this, we have created a test dashboard page that has six of these web parts that display upon page load. However we have noticed that we get intermittent errors when a user does things like refresh the connection or workbook, or change the filter on PivotTables. The user gets a generic error messages such as "An error has occurred. Please contact an administrator." and then their session in Excel Services is hosed up. They have to shut down IE and come back to the site in order to interact successfully with the Excel web parts again.
I have looked at the logs but just see generic messages like "EcsSoapException: An error has occurred." that don't give me something that I can really act on. Also I have checked the application event logs but didn't find anything relevant.
Any ideas on how to troubleshoot this?
It turns out this is a bug with Kerberos in Windows 2008. Microsoft has just released a hotfix for this (see link below). The hotfix completely resolved all my issues.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969083