There have been many different posts about deploying Office 365 with SCCM. The majority of them used the Office Configuration tool in a more or less creative way.
An easier method has been available for awhile to help SCCM admins to create the “perfect” Office 365 package. The SCCM Office 365 Installer is a new feature released in SCCM 1702. SCCM Office 365 Installer provides an easy-to-use wizard to define every related item for an Office 365 application.
Whether you are new to creating Office 365 package or simply want to refresh an older package, this solution will ease every step of creating an Office 365 package.
In this post, we will detail how to use the Office 365 Installer creation wizard.
If you are looking for How to Update Office 365 using SCCM, see our previous post.
Prerequisites
- SCCM Current Branch 1702 and up
Create SCCM Office 365 Installer Package
- Browse to Software Library / Office 365 Client Management
- Select Office 365 Installer
- Define the Name and Network path to store the content for the Office 365 installation
- Select Manually specify the Office 365 client settings
Important Info
You can specify an XML file, but using the wizard is much more intuitiveYou can get the Office 365 Deployment tool to help create the XML file from the Microsoft download page or the Office 365 Configuration XML editor
- Select
- Suite:
- Office 365 Business
- Office 365 ProPlus
- For more details about suites, see the following Microsoft documentation
- Applications :
- Acces
- Excel
- OneDrive for Business(Groove)
- OneDrive (Desktop)
- OneNote
- Outlook
- PowerPoint
- Publisher
- Skype for Business
- Word
- Additional products:
- Project
- Visio
- Remember that licenses are required even if installed
- Suite:
Important Info
Be careful about OneDrive for Business(Groove). This is usually no longer used and confusing because of the naming.OneDrive (Desktop) is the one to be used
-
- Select
- Architecture
- 32-bit
- 64-bit
- Version: leave blank for the latest release
- Channel:
- Monthly
- Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)
- Semi-Annual Channel
- More details on Office 365 channels on Microsoft documentation
- Languages
- Properties
- Accept EULA
- AutoActivate
- Shared Computer Activation
- Pin icons to the taskbar (Win7/8.x only)
- Architecture
- Select
Important Info
Microsoft still recommend x86 over x64 in many cases. See details on Microsoft documentation
- A prompt will display when selecting the Accept EULA
- Select to deploy the application now or not. Deploying it now will also ask to distribute the content.
- Summary
- Progress, this will actually download the content to install Office 365. It will take some time.
- Completion
Result
The content folder has the Office Deployment tool, configuration.xml and actual bits of the Office click-to-run installer
Configuration.xml has almost all the required information in it.
Important Info
The only thing that is not part of the configuration.xml is the Display Level.We recommend adding Display Level=”None”, so there is no prompt for a user or to run in a Task Sequence.
For more details about the configuraiton.xml, see Microsoft Documentation.
- An application is automatically created at the root of Software Library / Application Management / Applications
- The Detection method is automatically populated.
This is by far the easiest method to create an SCCM Office 365 application or package. No problem of syntax in the Configuration.xml, no problem to define the Detection Rule.
SCCM Office 365 Inventory Report
Remember to look at our free Office 365 report to keep track of your deployed version and channel.
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15 Comments on “Create Office 365 Installer using SCCM”
Deploying this in an environment with client PCs that have O365 versions from 16.0.7967.2161 all the way to 16.0.11727.20244. (a) Will this update everyone to the latest and (b) how will it affect the few dozen users that have Visio or Project, will it leave it as is or uninstall it.
Thanks,
AK
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We deploy Office as part of our TS with Project and Visio advertised to our licensed users.
I found the detection methods for visio and project were wrong (the wizard sets them so they all point at the same reg key). I found the simplest way to resolve was to change the detection method for Visio and Project to point to
%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\VISIO.EXE
%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\WINPROJ.EXE
Set the file version to the version of the software. Whatever you download, that version number will match the exe version numbers.
Great article. In Microsoft’s documentation, they specify an option to “Upgrades: Choose to automatically remove all previous MSI versions of Office.” I don’t see that option in my test VM, nor did I see it on your screenshots. Do you know why it is not there or under what conditions it would show up?
Thanks for the great article. Since you did allude to “refresh[ing] an older package” I did have a question regarding keeping my installation source up to date. My current installation source has version 16.0.9126.2227, but the latest I manually downloaded is version 16.0.9126.2275. Is there an automated way to keep the source version current or refresh the source in-place, or does one need to run through the Office 365 Client Installation Wizard again and create a new package specifying a new directory to download the content?
Thanks again
I second this question, please advise.
Hi Chris and Ace,
There is no magic trick to keep the source package of Office 365 up-to-date. but that would be a great idea to work on this.
thanks
Jonathan
We have used this process and it has worked well. I have a big question.
If the install is set to not install Project or Visio and we set another application for these items. When the second package is installed will the first package need to be removed and then the new parts installed or can it be installed over what is on the machine.
There has been a suggestion that when the new components are set with a removal and reinstall any addins or settings will be lost.
Therefore we are deploying the whole suite to all with our having to set the user with a license if they need the component
It does not deal with existing 2016 installs either, which will cause it to fail (but it will still add the registry entry; so after removing Office 2016, there won’t be a way to re-install 365 from Software Center as it will believe it is already present).
Changing the installer to run the scrub script first should fix all that I assume?
You need to change the default detection method to “ClientVersionToReport” instead of “VersiontoReport”. This will keep the installer from showing as installed in Software Center, if it fails from having Office 2016 installed.
The Detection Rule is not reliable, as that registry entry remains even if Office 365 is later uninstalled. Also, the wizard fails to add an Uninstaller to the application.
Is there any tweak with the current detection method so we can add components of Office 365 as needed?
Will this deal with Office 2016 installs that are currently on the machine?