Development lifecycle overview

All Office Add-ins are built upon the Office Add-ins platform. They share a common framework through which certain capabilities can be implemented. This means that regardless of whether you're creating an add-in for Excel, Outlook, or another Office application, you can implement features such as dialog boxes, add-in commands, task panes, and single sign-on (SSO).

For any add-in you build, you need to understand important concepts like Office application and platform availability, Office JavaScript API programming patterns, how to specify an add-in's settings and capabilities in the manifest file, how to test, debug, and publish an add-in, and more. Review the documentation listed in the following table. That gives you a good foundation for the application-specific documentation that corresponds to the add-in you're building, such as Excel.

	Plan Learn the best practices and system requirements for Office Add-ins.
	Develop Learn the APIs and patterns to develop Office Add-ins.
	Test and debug Learn how to test and debug Office Add-ins.
	Publish Learn how to deploy and publish Office Add-ins.
	Reference View the reference documentation for the Office JavaScript APIs, the add-ins manifest, error code lists, and more.