A system and method that allows an administrator to provide application extensions in a platform-neutral shell environment is provided. The administrator defines a graphical interface, such as an icon, used to launch the platform dependent software application. The administrator centrally manages the application extensions by defining the extension and including the extension definition in self-contained desktops. The administrator defines the executables and directories used to launch the corresponding application. The administrator selects desktop components, including application extensions, needed for a particular job role and packages the components into the self-contained desktop package file. The desktop packages and included application extensions are received and loaded on a platform-neutral desktop shell application. The shell application exists in a platform-neutral environment such as a Java virtual machine. The application extensions are launched from the shell application in order to invoke or utilize platform-dependent software applications.