Announcing the 2015 Office App Awards winners

After weeks of judging, the 34 best Office add-ins and apps of 2015 were announced today at a celebration party at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Orlando.

Top partners such as Nintex, DocuSign and Smartsheet snared a combined 13 first-, second- or third-place awards across 13 categories in the second annual contest.

Many smaller and emerging partners captured prizes as well. They included polling company Mentimeter; expense-software provider Ivero; HR specialist Kirkness Associates; forms provider Ardevia Software; and SharePoint specialist SkyLite Systems—all of whom captured first place awards of their own.

In all, Microsoft judges considered 110-plus top productivity solutions culled from hundreds of candidates across the Office Store, Azure Marketplace, and the Windows Phone, Android and iTunes stores. To be eligible, solutions must have been published or updated this year, interact with Office data, sport high quality ratings and/or solid user evaluations, or meet certain other quantitative metrics.

Judges were especially impressed by a raft of education-focused solutions by ELEARNINGFORCE, Mobiliya Technologies and Fluidity Software—all first place finishers. These represent the leading edge of a fleet of new education solutions being published to the Office 365 Store this summer, greatly strengthening our education extensibility story.

Rounding out the first place winners were Microsoft Project specialists Sensei Project Solutions and Campana & Schott, while SONJASAPPS and iGlobe captured top honors for their commitment to international development and distribution. Bullhorn for Email captured first place for “Most Launched Office Add-in” (excluding dictionaries).

“It really was gratifying to see the breadth and depth of the Office add-ins and apps available today,” said Jim Epes of Office Developer Marketing, who managed the contest. “Picking winners was actually pretty tough. We have more than 1,750 Store add-ins now, and hundreds more mobile and federated web apps that call Office data—so few people are fully conversant with all of them. It was fun to hear our engineers muttering ‘that’s really cool’ when we showed them a new solution they hadn’t seen before.”

Taking the prize for “People’s Choice” was forms and workflow vendor Nintex USA, which captured no fewer than five awards, including first place for “Most-Launched SharePoint Add-in” and “Most Business Value SharePoint Add-in” plus two second place awards, including “Best Mobile App.” Nintex, which ranks among the very first partners to commit to the Office Store when it launched in 2012, also was named the WPC Conference’s “Office and SharePoint Development Application Partner of the Year.”

Electronic signature leader DocuSign captured five awards as well, with a first for “Highest Business Value Office Add-in” and four second place finishes.

Smartsheet captured first place for “Best Office 365 App” among its three awards, while both ELEARNINGFORCE and photo-serving solution PicHit.me won two awards each. Mobiliya won for “Best Mobile Solution.”