One of the key features in SharePoint 2013 is the ability to add in third party applications through the SharePoint App Store.  Adding an app is easy – just go under settings and click on Add an App.  On the left hand side, you will see a “SharePoint Store” item where you can add some great new apps from third party providers:

When you add an app, you will be prompted to trust the app and then it will be installed into your Site Collection:

Here are a few I have tried that might be useful for your 2013 intranet.

The Weather!

At Navantis, we have build hundreds of intranets and almost every time we are asked to include a weather feed.  Bamboo has a world clock and weather app part that works quite well:

My one complaint is that it doesn’t dynamically fill the web part space – its fixed width and height.

Import Spreadsheet

This used to be a feature in Lists, but now this is a separate app.

If you click on the app, you can import an excel spreadsheet and turn it into a custom list.  In this version, you can select specific ranges of cells to important instead of an entire spreadsheet which is a nice additional feature.

Brava Viewer

Brava makes an awesome viewer that allows for dynamic rendering of large files.  This is particularly useful for engineering drawings, CAD drawings, floor plans, etc. as these files tend to be very large and require pan and zooming.  Brava also supports annotations to documents through its viewer.

You can install the HTML version of their viewer and hook it up to your document library:

QR Code App Part

This app part generates a QR code based on a configurable text field.  It’s unfortunate that you cannot drive this from a list but still the basic functionality shows the potential.

This post was written by Chris Woodill
Christopher Woodill is the Vice President, Public Sector for Navantis. With over 15 years of experience planning, managing and implementing technology strategies in both the public and private sector, Christopher is responsible for public sector sales, strategy and delivery of solutions for our clients in healthcare, government, municipalities and education.