Deploy the Outlook add-in for your office

For an IT administrator: pushing the PadFlow add-in to users from the Microsoft 365 admin center, what it asks for, and how to remove it.

PadFlow is a project management application for land developers. One of the things it keeps is a document register per deal, and this add-in is how a message and its attachments get into that register: somebody reading mail in Outlook picks a project and files it, instead of saving attachments to a folder and uploading them later.

You are here because somebody in your organisation asked for it. This page is the deployment, end to end, and nothing on it assumes you use PadFlow.

What you are deploying

An Outlook add-in described by a single XML manifest. It is the add-in-only manifest format, not the unified JSON one, which is why it installs on Outlook for Mac and mobile without a Marketplace round trip.

The manifest is at https://app.padflow.io/addins/outlook/manifest.xml, and the same file downloads from inside the application as padflow-outlook-manifest.xml.

Four facts worth having before you deploy it.

It asks for ReadItem. That is read access to the message a user currently has open, and its attachments. It is not ReadWriteMailbox. The add-in cannot read other messages, cannot send, and cannot change anything in a mailbox.

It talks to one host. Every URL in the manifest, the pane, the icons and the support link, is on app.padflow.io.

It needs mailbox requirement set 1.8. Current Outlook builds have it. A build old enough to lack it will not offer the add-in rather than offering a broken one.

Deploying it grants nobody anything. A user still needs a PadFlow account and an intake grant on a project before the pane will file. Pushing the add-in puts a button in front of people; it does not open a door.

Deploy it

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center as a Global Administrator or an Exchange Administrator.
2. Go to Settings, then Integrated apps.
3. Choose Upload custom apps.
4. For the app type, choose Office Add-in.
5. Provide the manifest. You can paste the link, https://app.padflow.io/addins/outlook/manifest.xml, or upload the file if your policy is to keep a copy. Either is the same document.
6. Let the admin center validate it. It checks the manifest against the Office schema and reports what it found.
7. Choose who gets it: just me, specific users or groups, or the entire organization.
8. Read the permissions the add-in requests and accept them. This is the ReadItem above.
9. Deploy, and confirm.

After you deploy

Propagation is usually done inside the hour. Microsoft's own guidance says to allow up to 24 hours before treating it as a problem, and that number is theirs rather than ours.

Once it lands it appears by itself, in Outlook on the web, in the desktop clients on Windows and Mac, and in Outlook mobile. Nobody has to install anything, and there is nothing for you to send them.

It shows on a message being read. It does not appear on a compose window or on a calendar item, by design in the manifest rather than by configuration.

On a narrow window Outlook folds the add-in row away and PadFlow folds with it. That is the one support question worth pre-empting: it is under the ellipsis, which newer builds label Apps. The user's page says the same thing in their words, and is the one to forward.

Remove it

In the admin center, go to Settings, then Integrated apps, select PadFlow in the list, and remove it. Removal propagates the same way the deployment did.

Removing the add-in takes the button away. It does not touch anything already filed: a document that reached a project's register stays there, because it is a record in PadFlow rather than a copy of your mailbox.