We've just looked at two cloud-based methods for deploying apps,
Intune and Microsoft Store for Business.
Now it's time to look at some of the apps that many
companies are likely to want deployed, Microsoft Office.
Office 365, as we'll see, has many versions,
but ProPlus is the one we're concerned with in this clip.
It's a subscription service for enterprises that includes the core
Office apps plus some non-core apps like Publisher,
Access, and OneDrive.
However, ProPlus does not include Exchange, SharePoint, or Teams.
You also get web versions of the core apps,
and licensed users can install the software on a
maximum of five devices per user.
And by the way,
ProPlus at this writing is the only version that we can deploy via Intune.
To put things into some context,
it might be useful to do a quick comparison of Office 365 versus Office 2019.
Office 365 provides on-premises software plus online
web versions of the applications.
Customers make recurring payments based on the number of users licensed,
and the license is pay-as-you-go, although,
depending on the license, an annual commitment may be required.
Customers receive feature updates,
analogous to the feature updates in Windows 10,
twice per year, automatically and at no extra charge.
Customers also receive cloud services such as OneDrive,
and optionally others, depending on the license.
Finally, we can deploy the ProPlus edition via Intune.
By contrast, Office 2019 is on-premises software only,
no online versions; it requires a one-time payment
that conveys a perpetual-use license,
but that license does not include the semi-annual feature updates,
and only includes cloud services for a 5-year period.
We cannot at present deploy Office 2019 via Intune.
Now within the Office 365 family, we distinguish between Enterprise,
Business, and consumer editions.
Within the Enterprise family, which requires an annual financial commitment,
we have E1 with cloud services only,
E3 with the addition of the Office core apps,
E5, which further adds Power BI, and ProPlus,
which provides the core apps plus Access and Publisher on
the PC platform as well as OneDrive.
The Business editions of Office 365 permit monthly
payments and include Business Essentials,
providing cloud services only; Business,
providing core apps and OneDrive including desktop
versions; and Business Premium, with pretty much everything.
And finally, the Consumer editions include Personal,
which, as the name implies, is a one-person license; Home,
which differs from Personal in that you can license
up to six people in a household, and Home & Student,
including only the three apps that students are most likely to need.
Now the general procedure for deploying Office 365 with Intune is to
navigate to the Client apps node of the main Intune page,
click Apps and then Add, and choose Office 365 Suite as the app type.
When it comes to configuring the settings, we have two main choices.
We can use Intune's Configuration Designer,
which lets us interactively configure the app suite,
that is select the apps we wish to deploy,
and configure the app suite settings,
which includes miscellaneous choices such as 32- versus 64-bit binaries,
whether to remove old MSI-based versions of Office,
language choices, and so on.
As an alternative to using the Configuration Designer,
we can enter XML data generated by earlier tools,
such as the Office Deployment Tool or the online Office
Customization Tool that contain similar information to the choices
offered by the Intune Configuration Designer.
Now finally,
we give the app suite a name and a description and optionally a
category via the App Suite Information tile,
along with informational and privacy URLs if we wish,
and we assign the suite to one or more Azure AD groups.
Here's the App Suite Settings page.
Now we can see the options for 32-bit versus 64-bit architecture; Update
channel; whether to automatically remove previously installed MSI versions of
Office applications; whether to auto-accept the end user license agreement;
whether to use shared compute activation licensing,
so for example that would be in scenarios where multiple individuals
are using the same computer and logging on with their separate
credentials; and what languages to install.
And here's a screenshot of the App Suite Information page where we can provide
a name and description for the suite and optionally provide category
information and URL details for information and privacy.
Now an important note regarding Intune deployment of Office 365 is
that the installation will probably fail if any previous desktop
versions of Office exist on the machine.
Now we just saw the option in the App Suite
Settings page to remove such versions,
but do be aware that this will delete all Office 365 apps on the device,
even if you only want to install one or two new ones.
Of course, we don't have to use Intune to deploy Office 365.
Other options include Configuration Manager and Group
Policy and manual installation,
other third-party MDM and LAN-based app deployment tools.
If by chance you are upgrading existing Office installations,
be on the lookout for compatibility issues with Visual Basic
for applications macros and Office add-ins.
Happily, some compatibility assessment tools exist to help us in this regard,
including the Microsoft Readiness Toolkit and the cloud-based
Log Analytics Upgrade Readiness solution.
As a final note to this clip,
although we focused here on the Windows 10 scenario,
be aware that Intune can also deploy Office 365 to macOS devices. And now you're ready to use Intune to deploy Office 365 ProPlus.