Deploying the Excel add-in for IT

This page is for Office administrators who deploy the SovrGPT Excel add-in centrally or set it up on individual machines. You can work through it without follow-up questions. To pass it on, the address is enough:

https://sovrgpt.com/en/docs/excel-addin-it

There are two routes: central deployment for regular operation, and the single-machine route for environments where central deployment is not available.

The add-in's interface is currently in German. Labels are given below as they appear, with a translation where needed.

1. What you enter

A single address:

https://sovrgpt.com/xl/manifest.xml

This is the add-in's XML manifest. It is publicly reachable, needs no sign-in and rarely changes.

No software is installed on the workstations. The add-in is a web application that Excel shows in an embedded frame. Your users get a button in the ribbon.

2. The route in the Microsoft 365 admin center

1. Open admin.microsoft.com and sign in with an account holding the Global Administrator or Exchange Administrator role.
2. Settings → Integrated apps
3. "Upload custom apps"
4. Choose "Office Add-in" as the app type.
5. Choose "Provide link to manifest file" and paste the address from §1.
6. Validate. Errors in the manifest are shown here.
7. Assign users: individual people, groups or the entire organisation.
8. Deployment type: choose Fixed.
9. Finish.

After that your users have nothing to do. The next time they start Excel, the SovrGPT group with the button Assistent öffnen (open assistant) appears on the right of the Home tab.

• It can take up to 72 hours until it is visible for all users. That is down to Microsoft's distribution.
• Publishing on AppSource is not required.
• Microsoft intends this route (centralized deployment) for exactly this case.

3. Prerequisites: please check first

These points decide whether the route in §2 is open to you. They come from Microsoft's documentation on central deployment.

Sovereign and government clouds (such as Microsoft 365 Government): the "Integrated apps" page is sometimes missing there. Assignment then runs through the classic Centralized Deployment page, with the same address.

4. When a policy is in the way

Two group policies can block the add-in. Both are under your control:

• "Block Web Add-ins", registry value HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs\disableallcatalogs = 1. If it is set, web add-ins are switched off entirely.
• "Let users access the Office Store" affects the store route. It is not required for the central deployment in §2.

Check command for an affected workstation (PowerShell, no administrator rights, changes nothing):

Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKCU:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\TrustedCatalogs' -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

If there is no output, the policy is not set.

5. The single-machine route, when ① is not possible

For environments without a Microsoft 365 tenant (pure LTSC/perpetual), for pilots and for individual machines.

Direct downloads, both unsigned and in plain text:

The end-user instructions are at sovrgpt.com/en/excel. Pass this link to your users, not the file (see below). Checksums for both files are in the user documentation.

What the file does. It is a text script you can read before distributing it:

1. It downloads the manifest from https://sovrgpt.com/xl/manifest.xml to %LOCALAPPDATA%\SovrGPT\Excel\sovrgpt-excel-manifest.xml.
2. It checks that the downloaded file is an add-in manifest (<OfficeApp) and aborts otherwise.
3. It writes exactly one value under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\WEF\Developer: the add-in ID as the name, the path to the manifest as the value.
4. It reads the value back and reports success or failure.

No administrator rights, no service, no autostart, no entry outside the user profile. The removal file reverses both the registry value and the folder.

Then at the workstation:

1. Close Excel completely (every window) and reopen it.
2. In Excel, open Home → Add-ins, select SovrGPT für Excel and press Add.
3. The Assistent öffnen button is from now on permanently in the Home tab, in the SovrGPT group.

Two limitations of this route:

• It triggers a Windows SmartScreen warning ("Windows protected your PC"), like every downloaded file of this type. More info → Run anyway.
• The file cannot be sent by e-mail. Outlook blocks .cmd, .bat, .reg, .exe and .msi on the level 1 block list; the recipient can neither open nor save it. Distribute the link, put the file on a company drive, or distribute it through your software deployment.

Microsoft calls this route sideloading and does not intend it for production use. It is suitable for a trial; for regular operation §2 is the right route.

Excel on the web

This requires a workbook in OneDrive or SharePoint. No Trust Center or share is needed: Home → Add-ins → More Add-ins → My Add-ins → Upload My Add-in → select the manifest → Upload.

6. Network and data protection

What must be reachable:

Both over HTTPS (443). The add-in needs no further allowances; web search also runs through our server.

Where the data is processed. Storage and AI processing take place in EU data centres. The exception is web search (see below). The provider and controller is rooom AG (Jena); technical operation is supported by eNetworkers GmbH (Jena) on behalf of rooom AG. The full privacy policy: sovrgpt.com/datenschutz.

What is sent from the workbook: not the file. The add-in creates a short description (sheet names, column headings, used ranges, formula patterns, a small sample of rows) and sends it with the user's instruction to the chosen model. To answer a question, the model can read back individual ranges, at most 20,000 cells per range; the sidebar shows which one beforehand. With Was wird gesendet? (what is sent?) every user can see exactly that text before submitting. The sample rows can be switched off.

Web search. The "Websuche" (web search) toggle in the sidebar is on by default. If the model is missing a fact, our server sends a search term formulated by the model to Brave Search (Brave Software, Inc., USA). The workbook is not sent, but the search term can contain terms from the task or the sheet. Every search appears with its search term in the conversation. Users can switch web search off themselves; there is currently no setting to block it for the whole organisation.

The complete description of what is sent is in the user documentation.

7. What your users get

• A button in the Home tab → SovrGPT → Assistent öffnen.
• A sidebar that takes instructions in plain language ("calculate the VAT in column D and highlight everything above €1,000").
• Nothing is written immediately. SovrGPT first shows a plan of changes in plain language. By default every proposal waits for the user's approval; how often they are asked is their own setting.
• Undo restores the previous state, including on Office 2019, 2021 and 2024, where Microsoft's own one-click undo for add-ins is missing.
• Purely visual changes (font, fill colour, borders) are marked nur Strg+Z (Ctrl+Z only) in the preview. They can be reverted with Excel's own undo, not with our button, because the interface needed for that does not exist on Office 2019.

Sign-in: on first start the user signs in with their SovrGPT account. The add-in receives an access of its own that applies only to the Excel sidebar and can be revoked individually. An API key of the organisation is not used for this.

8. Supported Excel versions

The add-in requires only the smallest Excel API set and therefore loads on older perpetual versions too. Anything beyond that it checks at runtime and leaves out. The user then gets a plain-language note instead of an error.

9. Updates

Improvements to SovrGPT take effect immediately and without any action on your part, because the add-in is a web application and the manifest only points to it.

You only need to re-enter it if the manifest itself changes, for example for a new ribbon button. We announce such cases in advance.

10. Why there is no certificate

Office web add-ins are not signed. Unlike VBA macros or old COM and VSTO add-ins, there is no Authenticode procedure and no certificate you could buy. An add-in is a web page plus an XML description.

The certificate that matters is the TLS certificate of the domain sovrgpt.com.

11. Contact

Send questions about deployment to rooom AG through the contact details in the legal notice. For a pilot we are happy to provide test accounts.