What is the proper flow of updating addin manifest changes for an admin managed addin?

Question

We recently enabled <SupportsPinning> attribute in the manifest of our addin. Simply pushing our source code to AWS S3 does not update admin managed addins. The work around seemed to be to remove the admin managed addin and then reinstall the addin with the updated manifest. Is this the correct flow?

Also, while some users are able to see the update (pinnable sidebar), others cannot. Is there some type of cache that can be cleared or an explanation of the inconsistency?

Answer 1

There are 2 questions here.

Question #1 For the admin managed add-ins, should the update flow happen through the admin portal?

If you are updating the manifest, then the add-in needs to be re-deployed. This is same as the office add-in store as the admin deployments. So you were doing the correct thing.

Question #2 Is there some kind of add-in manifest cache?

Sure - the clients would cache the manifests. Also if the people who are meant to use the add-ins are on different builds of Office, that might create a slight behavioral change as well. It will eventually be updated where eventually is most likely less than 24 hours.