Welcome to Desktop Deployment Essentials. Our new series to help you prepare for
your shift to Windows 10 an Office 365 ProPlus. In the next few minutes I'm
going to walk you through our third step in our recommended deployment process
wheel to prepare you for the delivery of Office and your line of business apps.
Now for those of you starting with Microsoft Office 2010 or a volume
activation version of Office 2013 or 2016, don't worry I'm also going to show
you a crash course of what you need to know about Click-to-Run application
packaging for office and how you can configure your Office apps and get them
ready for automated deployment. In step one of our deployment process we
walked you through device and app readiness as the way to inventory your PC
hardware and software and prioritize and triage issues by accessing known
compatibility information and fixes from Windows and Office. Now those fixes can
be to update retire, replace, or apply a compatibility fix to ensure that your
apps work on Windows 10 and the air add-ins work on Office 365 ProPlus now
one of the biggest decisions you're gonna make here is whether to use 32 or
64-bit natively compiled apps especially when both options exist such as the case
with Office 365 ProPlus. Now to take advantage of additional compute and RAM
on new devices, it's often worth figuring out any add-in or file related
compatibility challenges to move to 64-bit if nothing is blocking you from
deploying 64-bit Office. It's a good idea to move forward with this option as it
will usually be better and more future-proof choice. So let's talk about
where to start now there are many methods and models for installing apps
on Windows. So let's look at your options for app delivery, packaging and
distribution of your line of business apps now your lob apps. You're probably
using things like MSI packages or executables to install your apps is part
of a deployment task sequence. Tools like System Center Configuration Manager and
Intune are optimized to deliver MSI packaged apps and Windows 10
obviously continues to support those packages next there's ConfigMgr if
you're using ConfigMgr now for app delivery once you validated your apps on
Windows 10 you can either assign them as required out so they're automatically
installed on all targeted pcs or you can use Software Center so that users can
choose additional apps published by the IT team for their PCs. And of course if
you're using Intune the Company Portal serves a similar function across devices.
Equally perhaps one of most popular app delivery methods is
using imaging. Imaging approaches to build and capture can also save time
when provisioning new PCs. In this case applications are either installed by a
task sequence or manually then an image is captured and the required
applications are pre-installed. Now remember though the operating systems as
well as the apps inside that image can become stale quickly especially if
images aren't frequently refreshed. Now the cumulative update model for Windows
10 and office 365 ProPlus helps with this problem because it contains all the
updates between when you seal that image
until when you apply the image sometimes
that can be several months later. Now this doesn't eliminate all issues
associated with staleness completely. This is why we recommend a thin image
approach where applications are installed from outside the image at
deploy time also Office 365 ProPlus can not be pre-activated by the system admin
it's because it's a user-based activation. Now, you can pre-install
Office using the Office Deployment Tool and skip user sign-in so the user can
sign-in for the first time Office is launched then be assigned the activation
and also take advantage of other capabilities that leverage sign-in like
getting to your most recently used files wherever they are. Now speaking of Office
365 ProPlus deployment, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the Click to
Run installation approach office 365 ProPlus in every version of Office in
the upcoming 2019 released users click to run technology vs. MSI packaging it
also brings with it a number of advantages like improved installation
time faster and more efficient updating and cleaner uninstallation. Now for broad
Office 365 roll-outs Configuration Manager Current Branch has native
support for the updated Office Customization Tool package customization
for Click-to-Run install time and native support for software update
management post installation. Microsoft Intune also has native installation
configuration support for Office 365 ProPlus packages. So let's move on to
browser-based apps. Beyond your 32 or 64-bit line of business apps, there are a
few things to consider in order to make sure that your browser-based
applications continue to work as expected. Now if you have specific
websites and apps you know have compatibility problems with Microsoft
Edge you can use the Enterprise Mode site list so that those websites
automatically open using Internet Explorer 11. Now everything that we've
just explored falls into the realm of common approaches
currently used to configure package and distribute your apps. There are also some
new options to consider first the Microsoft Store for Business provides a
flexible way to discover acquire manage and distribute free and paid apps and
Windows 10 devices at scale as an IT admin you can manage Microsoft Store apps and
private line of business apps all from one inventory plus assign and reuse
licenses as needed users can find and install apps that you've approved from
the store and you can publish those along with your own custom apps to your
own private store store apps can be natively built as UWP apps or you can
use the Desktop Bridge to repackage your existing apps for the store and add
modern experiences for Windows 10. Now aside from the code that you use to
light up Windows 10 experiences your apps will remain unchanged they'll just
work as-is. Next, MSIX is another emerging option for application
packaging that uses containerization technology available in Windows and also
brings many of the best aspects of Click-to-Run UWP and MSI packaging together as
a containerized package the application will be delivered and dynamically
integrated by the operating system containerization separates the
applications from the operating system and there are a number of advantages to
this, such as clean uninstall and removal packages, so unlike MSI and EXE based
packages today that leave items on the system, these are much cleaner
you don't need administrative credentials to install or see native
Windows integration so a standard user account will work. So that was an
overview of a few core options for app delivery as you prepare for your desktop
deployment. Next up we're going to cover your considerations for migrating user
files and settings between Windows environments as you move to the next
step in the deployment process wheel and to learn more about what we cover today
visit our Modern Desktop Deployment Center and keep following our Desktop
Deployment Essentials series here in Microsoft Mechanics. Thanks for watching!
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