Deploy Office Click-to-Run on Windows 10 devices managed with Microsoft Intune

When we think about the concept of managing mobile devices, ever since the release of Windows 10 and the announcement of managing those devices through an OMA-DM agent (also referred to as MDM in some cases) with Microsoft Intune, this new way of managing Windows 10 devices have look very promising for many companies. However, there has been a huge limitation for this to hit the masses, and that has been the fact that there were no way to deploy Office 365 Client (Office Click-to-Run). A while ago, the Office team announced the Install Generator (now called Install Toolkit) for Office Click-to-Run, which have some impressions that Microsoft is closing the gap on the problem with deploying Office for Windows 10 devices managed as mobile devices with Microsoft Intune. Although, myself and some colleagues tested this new tool that generates an MSI file for the Office Click-to-Run installation, and deployed that to some Windows 10 devices in our lab environments. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that that time, and we thought that we might have done something wrong. But as of today, MIcrosoft has announced that the InstallToolkit for Office Click-to-Run is now supported to use with Microsoft Intune to successfully deploy Office 365 Client to mobile device managed Windows 10 devices.
This is actually huge news when you think about the mobile concept with Windows 10, Azure AD join and Microsoft Intune. We can now Azure AD join devices, let them be managed by Microsoft Intune, deploy Office 365 Client and have SSO including many other great features that Microsoft Intune brings to the table in terms of MDM management. In this post I’ll walk you through the process of generating an MSI file from the Install Toolkit and deploy it with Microsoft Intune to a Windows 10 device.

Overview

As I’ve already mentioned a bit, we’re gonna deploy Office Click-to-Run by using the software distribution feature called Windows Installer through MDM in Microsoft Intune. I’d also like to mention how I’ve currently set up my lab environment, to fully support this scenario. My lab environment consists of an Azure AD directory with automatic enrollment in Microsoft Intune enabled. My lab user account has an Office 365 license. As for my Windows 10 lab device, it’s Azure AD joined and it’s getting a General Configuration policy from Microsoft Intune. All of this is not a requirement when deploying Office Click-to-Run with Microsoft Intune, however you’ll need the following:

• Microsoft Intune tenant with Mobile Device Management capabilities
• An enrolled Windows 10 device

As you can see, it’s not really a huge list of requirements. The reason I mentioned my lab environment setup is simply because I want to give you an overview of what’s possible when enabling the cloud.

Generate MSI installation for Office Click-to-Run

The first thing we need to do is to generate a MSI installation file for Office Click-to-Run. When you walk through this guide, make a note of that some of settings that I’ve chosen to make for the silent install of Office Click-to-Run may not be suitable in your environment. However, you’ll need to make sure that you enable all of the unattended configurations. Therefor, consider the following:

• Exclude products you do not want to be installed (e.g. Access)
• Enable “Enable Updates”
• Leave “Display Level” set to the default “None”
• Enable “Accept UELA”

With those configurations, your deployment experience with Office Click-to-Run should be seamless, and not pose any problems.
1. Browse to the following website: Install Toolkit.
2. Click on Launch Installation.

3. Click Install.

4. Wait for the installation to download and install the required files.

5. Office 365 ProPlus Install Toolkit should now have launched. Click on Start new.

6. Select your desired Product, Edition and Channel, then click Next.

7. Make your Language selections and click Next.

8. On the Optional tab, make your desired optional configurations if required. As for this demonstration, I’ll leave their defaults. Click Next.

9. Select the applications that should be included or excluded and click Next.

10. In the Download pane, make your desired optional configurations and click Next.

11. In the Updates pane, make sure that Updates are Enabled, make any other desired configurations and click Next.

12. In the Options pane, select None as the Display Level and set Accept EULA to True. Click Next.

13. Finally, in the Generate pane, select MSI as the Instal type, set Silent install to Yes and optionally specify a name for the file that’s about to be generated. Click Generate.

14. Specify a location where the MSI file should be generated and click OK. Wait for the Install Toolkit to generate the file, it shouldn’t take long, unless you’ve chosen to download data and embed it within the installation.
15. When the MSI installation has been generated, click OK.

We now have a MSI file that can deploy to a mobile device managed Windows 10 device.

Deploy Office Click-to-Run with Microsoft Intune

Microsoft Intune was recently updated with the ability to deploy MSI based installations of apps on Windows 10 devices managed as mobile devices. This functionality is what we’re going to leverage on order to deploy Office Click-to-Run.
1. Login to manage.microsoft.com with your Global Admin account.
2. In the Apps workspace click on Add Apps.

3. Select the software installer type of Windows Installer through MDM (*.msi), browse for the generated MSI installation file and click Next.

4. Brand the application as you desire and click Next.

5. Click Next.

6. Make sure that you do not include any command line parameters and click Next.

7. Review the configuration and click Upload.

8. Once the application has successfully been uploaded, click Close.

9. Select the new application and click on Manage Deployment.

10. Select either an User group or Device group and click Next.

11. Select Required Install under Approval, As soon as possible under Deadline and click Finish.

With the Office 365 ProPlus app deployed to a group of Windows 10 devices managed by Intune, we have now completed all there’s to it.

Results

Once the Windows 10 devices sync with Microsoft Intune, users should see the Microsoft Click-to-Run setup running in the Task Manager. Users may not use the Task Manager, or even be aware of that this setup is running. However, you as an admin may want to be aware of this when troubleshooting installation problems.

Note from the picture above in the Network column, we can see that Office Click-to-Run is being installed (and downloaded). Once the installation has successfully finished, well, as usual, your applications will be available in the Start menu.

And that concludes how to deploy Office Click-to-Run on Windows 10 devices managed with Microsoft Intune. Now go play with this, it’s an excellent addition to enable a fully mobile work force!