Add-ins are used to extend ArcGIS Explorer's capabilities and can be created using Visual Studio and the ArcGIS Explorer SDK. The ArcGIS Explorer team has published a variety of ready-to-use add-ins that you can download from ArcGIS Explorer Labs, one of our ArcGIS Online Groups. Let's take a closer look at how you can use add-ins from the Labs group.

First, navigate to the ArcGIS Explorer Labs group - there's a number of ways to do this. One way is to go to the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center and click the Data tab, then look for the Labs group.

Another way is to go directly to ArcGIS Online and search for the ArcGIS Explorer groups, where you'll find the Labs group among them.

However you find it, the Labs group has lots of add-ins that you can choose from and begin using. Some are experiments, some represent functionality that will eventually find its way into the core product. All are unsupported. If you're a developer, you'll find the source code for some of these on the ArcGIS Explorer Gallery on the Resource Center.

When you find an interesting add-in, just click the name to learn more about it. When you find one you want to try, click Open in ArcGIS.

When prompted you can either open the add-in right away, or save the add-in (delivered as a file with a .EAZ extension) locally.

If you choose Open, ArcGIS Explorer will restart and you'll see the add-in you selected on a new Add-In tab on the ribbon.  If you choose Save, then you can browse to the .EAZ file by choosing Manage add-ins in the Resources section of the ArcGIS Explorer Options.

Whichever route you take you'll see a new Add-Ins tab with your chosen add-in(s). Here we've added the Wikipedia add-in.

Experiment with what you find on Labs, we'll be covering a few in detail here in future posts. If you want to learn more about add-ins you can review the Add Functionality Help topic.