In this post I’ll look at taking all the content from the previous articles around Office 365 ProPlus, and wrapping it as an application for delivery within ConfigMgr. Later, I’ll follow up with doing a vulnerability scan and patching it – to round out the whole concept of testing, why I picked an older version of Office, etc.
For now let’s summarize what we have;
- Setup.exe from Office Deployment Tool for Office 2016
- A customized configuration.xml
- The downloaded content for O365 ProPlus Retail
- Additional downloaded content for Visio and Project Pro Retail
- Total content size sitting at around 2.2Gb
For this article I’m using ConfigMgr Current Branch (1610) to setup the application for delivery. You might se minor differences based on using a different version, but generally the UI and functionality should match this article.
Setting up the application to deploy
In ConfigMgr we need a file/package content source provided as a share location. On my ConfigMgr primary site server (CMCB1) I created a share named \\CMCB1\AppShare. The directory is shared out from D:\AppShare, but you can obviously do this any way you choose.
Now let’s go into Software Library > Application Management > Applications:
Hit the “Create Application” button to launch the “Create Application Dialog”:
Hit “Next”, this opens up the “Specify information about this Application” dialog:
Fill in the information as you see fit – above is an example of the information I provided. When satisfied hit “Next”, this will open the dialog to Specify the Application Catalog entry:
Again, fill in the information as you see fit – above is an example of information I provided. When satisfied hit “Summary”, this will skip the “Deployment Types” dialog: We will add a deployment type later.
Review the summary screen for the application. Make adjustments as necessary, then hit “Next” to build. This will create the application definition within the ConfigMgr console and database, and provide a completion screen once done:
Hit “Close” to close out the dialog. This will display our new Application in the Applications list in the console (search criteria to limit the displayed apps):
Now let’s add a deployment type. We need at least one deployment type includes information about the installation files, install logic (command line) and a detection method.
While within Software Library > Application Management > Applications select and highlight the Office 365 application item. Then select “Create Deployment Type” either through the Home menu or by right-clicking on the application:
This will open up the “Create Deployment Type Wizard”:
Select “Script Installer” in the Type drop-down list. This will automatically select the “manually specify the deployment type information” radio button. Hit “Next”:
Fill in the information on the “General Information” page as appropriate, then hit “Next”:
This will open up the “Content” dialog, fill in the content as applicable:
- Content location, set the root (network share) folder containing the O365 setup.exe and configuration.xml file.
- Installation program, set the command line previously outlined “setup.exe /configure configuration.xml”
Adjust as applicable, then hit “Next”, this will open up the “Detection Method” dialog:
On the detection method dialog hit “Add Clause” to add a detection method:
For the detection rule, I setup the following items:
- Setting Type, select “Registry”
- Hive, set to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”
- Key, set to “SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\O365ProPlusRetail – en-us”
- Value, leave blank, select check-box “Use (Default) registry key value for detection”
- Data Type, select “String”
- Select “This registry setting must exist on the target system to indicate presence of this application”
Hit “OK” when done, this should now display the added Detection Rule:
Hit “Next” to move to the “User Experience” dialog:
On this screen, the only required change is under “Install behavior”, this should be set to “Install for System”. I made additional changes to adjust visibility, since we’re doing this for testing purposes – in production deployments you’d likely want to reduce or minimize user/desktop interaction by hiding the installation program visibility as well as possibly allow installations without any users logged in, etc.
When satisfied with the User Experience settings, hit “Summary”, this will skip the “Requirements” and “Dependencies” pages. For our purposes we don’t have any requirements of pre-installed software or dependencies. This brings us to the summary page:
Hit “Next” to allow ConfigMgr to build out the Deployment Type, and review the Completion dialog:
Hit “Close” to closeout the Deployment Type Wizard.
We now have 1 Deployment Type associated with the Application! Deploy your newly packaged Application – I’ll be deploying it to a Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 machine, and show us doing a vulnerability scan and update the application to the latest release through ConfigMgr in a later post. Stay tuned!