In this article, you will learn how to install the Lightning Conductor into your SharePoint Online tenant to use it within SharePoint and Teams. This normally only takes a few minutes.
The same process is used to install the software initially, and to upgrade it to a new version.
Prerequisites and roles
To install the Lightning Conductor into your SharePoint Online Tenant, you will need to be at least a SharePoint Administrator, and also a Site Collection Admin of the tenant App Catalog site. To approve the Microsoft Graph API permissions, you will need to be a Global Admin or an Application Admin.
Download the software
- If you wish to evaluate the Lightning Conductor free for 30 days, please complete the following online form here. (Note: you will receive an email from Lightning Tools with the direct download link in the email, but you can also download it from the link on the page). In the downloaded trial zip folder, there are separate folders related to the different versions of SharePoint. The client-side web part is available for SharePoint 2019/SE, GCC, Teams, and SharePoint Online. The following instructions are for SharePoint Online and Teams; SharePoint server installation instructions are in a separate article.
- If you are an existing customer, you can download the Lightning Conductor for SharePoint Online and Teams from our Download Center here.
Extract the downloaded Lightning Conductor x.x.x.x.zip folder to an appropriate location on a PC.
Add the app to your App Catalog
Click Upload and then browse to the unzipped Lightning Conductor folder where you saved it. Open the SharePoint Online folder. 
If your tenant is GCC, Dedicated, or does not allow external access (these are exceptions), then choose the appropriate subfolder; otherwise, open the SharePoint Online (most environments) folder. Select the lightning-conductor-cswp.sppkg file.
If you are upgrading the Lightning Conductor, you'll see a message that a file with this name already exists. Click Replace.
Enable the app
After the file has been uploaded, the Enable App panel will open on the right side. It will give you some information about the app, and allow you to choose how you wish to deploy the app (its availability). We recommend the default setting: Enable this app and add it to all sites. This will make the Lightning Conductor available to add as a web part to any site in your tenant.
By default, the box is also ticked to Add to Teams, which you can choose to do now if you wish, or you can add it to Teams later if you’re unsure at this point. The other option (Only enable this app) will enable the app in the App Catalog, but if someone wishes to use the Lightning Conductor on a site, they will need to use SharePoint’s Add an App feature on that site, to add the Lightning Conductor there. In either case, click the Enable App button.
Approve API permissions
Next, a panel will appear that says “Approve access so this app works as designed”. This is because some features of the Lightning Conductor take advantage of various Microsoft Graph entities, and approval must be given by a Global or Application Admin to allow the Lightning Conductor to make requests to the Microsoft Graph. If you are a Global Admin, click Go to API access page. Otherwise, a Global Admin can come back and do the approvals later via the API access link on the left menu of the App Catalog.
This will take you to the API Access page, which normally takes a moment to load. You should eventually see a number of Pending permission requests by the Lightning Conductor. You can view a current list of Lightning Conductor API requests in this Knowledge Base article. (If you are upgrading, only any new or previously unapproved requests will show as Pending.) The article also describes the purpose of each request; it's not necessary to approve a particular permission if you don’t plan to use the relevant feature.
Approve the appropriate Pending requests one by one; it’s not possible to approve them in bulk.
Add Lightning Conductor to Teams
If you did not add the Lightning Conductor to Teams above, and you wish to add the Lightning Conductor as a tab in a Teams channel, then you can do it later by selecting the Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor app in the App Catalog, and clicking Add to Teams. You will need to be at least a Teams Admin to perform this action, and your Teams environment must be configured to allow third-party apps.
You can now proceed to add the Lightning Conductor web part to your SharePoint pages. See Lightning Tools — Lightning Conductor – Using the Quick Configuration to begin.