Create a Self-Signed Certificate For Use With Provider Hosted Add-in In SharePoint Server 2016

When we are developing highly-trusted Provider Hosted Add-ins, we will be using a self-signed certificate for Add-in authentication. However, in production, we will have to use a third-party provided trust certificate and self-signed certificate is not really an option. In this blog, let’s see how to generate the self-signed certificate for use with Provider Hosted add-in development.
 
Spin up IIS Manager and select ‘Server Certificates’.

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Click on "Create Self-Signed Certificate" from the right window pane.

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Specify a name for the certificate.

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Click on OK. It will create the certificate which will be listed in the Server Certificates. Right click the certificate and click on Export.

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Specify the export location and the password. This will export a ‘.pfx’ file in the specified location.

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Now, we have to generate the ‘.cer’ file. Double click the recently created certificate. From the details section, click on ‘Copy to File’.

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Choose not to export the Private key and click on Next.

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Specify the export location.

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This will generate a .cer file in the export location.

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Now, whenever we are creating a High Trust Provider Hosted add-in, we can use this certificate (.pfx file) for add-in authentication, as shown below.

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Summary

Thus, we learned how to create a self-signed certificate for use with Provider Hosted add-in, in SharePoint Server 2016.

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