The Ultimate Guide to Installing Windows Apps via Intune
how are you installing applications on computers in your business are you still doing it manually what happens if you've got lots of computers that might take you a long time you're not still using DVDs are you or even floppy discs well there's a better way to do it these days you can install your applications using Microsoft InTune and guess what that's the topic for today's video so you don't need to manually install your applications anymore that is one of the benefits of a cloud first it strategy you move all of your devices into Microsoft InTune and you can install your applications via InTune now in a moment we're going to hop onto a computer and I'm going to show you my first example and that is installing Microsoft 365 apps things like word excel PowerPoint all from within Microsoft InTune but before we do that I want to give a quick shout out to today's sponsor which conveniently is a company called robopac now why is this convenient because today we're talking about InTune application packaging and we're doing it all from within Microsoft 365 now you might find it's a little bit clunky so meet robopac now robopac offers in tune application Packaging and Patch management and it actually gets it departments excited now Roop Pac have mastered Automation and they make updates feel a little bit like magic Now teams Save hours your applications stay secure now those complex packaging tasks like I'm going to show in today's video well they history now there are top Enterprises all across the world that are already embracing robopac now you can experience this too at robopac do.com where there's over 40,000 applications all packaged and ready to go so back on to today's content the first example I'm going to show you is how to install Microsoft 365 apps via InTune so that's things like Outlook word excel PowerPoint now there are two ways that you can install it via in tune there's an easy way and there's a slightly harder way so I'm going to kick off with the easy way let's go okay so we are in the admin Center for my test Microsoft 365 tency I've logged in as a global admin also what I've got I've got a little virtual machine down here running Windows 11 which is part of InTune and if I go into settings here and look at apps in installed apps you can see that there's not really a lot installed here in terms of applications these are just the standard apps that came with Windows 11 so I'll just minimize that and I'm going to go to admin centers Microsoft InTune and then I'm going to go to apps which is here so I can look at all apps and these are all the applications as I said this is a test tency I've got nothing here all I can do is filter back platform so I can go to just the Windows apps again there's nothing here so the first thing I want to do is go to add and I'm going to select the app type and then Microsoft 365 apps Windows 10 or later and select that the suite name has defaulted to this I just might delete that so it makes a bit more sense Microsoft 365 apps is fine you can give it a description preview you can give it a category if you're using a company portal you can choose to show this application in there I'm just going to leave this as no there's nothing really here to change okay we're going to click on next and then we go to this page here so as I said this is the easy way to install Microsoft 365 apps I would leave this as configuration designer and then we can select the applications that we want as part of the install so if your business doesn't use access you might not use public you can select which ones you want and which ones you don't okay we've then got an option to install some other applications now we can install these on the PCS but they would need a license attached to the Microsoft 365 user to use them so I will install one of these just to show you you probably want 64 bit we're going to choose open Office document format here and the update channel should be the current Channel there is an option here to remove other versions so if there's a ver version of office already installed hypothetically this should remove it however I have found it doesn't always work I will leave it as yes though the version to install we want the latest or if you need for any reason to install a specific version you can do there but I will leave that as latest and then we've got some other options here so we've got share computer activation this is if multiple users are using the same device so common scenarios things like remote desktop and things like that accept the Microsoft software licensing terms yes we want to do that we will leave this to to know and click on next and then we've got the assignments so who do you want to assign this software to so required what we can do here we can add a group so we could have a group of users a group of computers this is Handy let's say for example in your business the marketing team used the Adobe Creative application so if we were pushing out Adobe Creative applications we could assign it to the marketing team this is Microsoft Office I want to install this on all devices also we can make it available for enrolled devices or we can uninstall but I'm happy with that click on next and that's basically it we create it okay that has now been created the application so what we'll do we will monitor our virtual machine and we'll come back when it's been installed okay so our Microsoft 365 apps you can see the device status and it says installed one which looks pretty good so let's go over to my virtual machine and if I go into settings and go to apps installed apps you can see here we've got Microsoft 365 apps for Enterprise so there are a couple of different versions of Microsoft 365 apps there's Microsoft 36 5 apps for Enterprise and there's Microsoft 365 Apps for business when we're talking about Microsoft 365 business premium it's actually Microsoft 365 Apps for business that is included within that but I've yet to kind of find any differences between the software so someone might comment on this video and point one out but I've yet to find any difference so that is the easy way to install Microsoft 365 apps using in tune but sometimes you can have a few problems with this so what I'm going to do at the end of the video I'm going to loot back to Microsoft 365 apps and you might be thinking well why are you doing it at the end of the video well patience all will become clear nice and easy that wasn't it so now let's move on to another example of how you can install applications via InTune the next example I want to talk about is something called a we link so what's a web link well many businesses around the world use software as a service applications these are applications that are accessed just via a web page there is no software installed on the computer now a nice handy tip here is to install a link to that software as a service application right in the users start menu for easy access would you like me to show you okay okay we're in tune I can pop over to all apps and I'm going to click on add the app type I'm going to scroll down to web link and then I'm going to click on select now in our business we use something called Halo PSA it's completely cloud-based nothing is installed on the device so I'm going to use that as an example I'll give it a name a description so I'll put that in there just the same publisher easy and then the URL so I will Plum that into there now okay then we've got an option to require a manage browser to open this link if you click on the information it tells you what it is so if required when a user opens the web app it will open in an InTune protected browser like Microsoft Edge so you can switch that on I'm not going to switch it on for this tutorial we go to category we can give it a category if we want so I'll call this business okay again we can show this in the company portal if we want there's nothing else really I need to do you can add a logo if you want I'm not going to click on next again there's that assignment so I will add this to all devices and then I will click on next and that's essentially it so I'll click on Create and that application has been installed so we'll wait for a few minutes and then we'll come back and look at our test virtual machine so you can see my halo PSA and once again device St status installed so let's hop back to my virtual machine where is this installed let me show you it appears in the start menu so if I go to all my apps and I scroll down you can see that it's here now this might be handy for your business I think it is and if I launch that it just goes opens a web browser and go to the login screen if you're using a lot of cloud-based apps I think it's a nice idea to publish those as kind of web links and have them available in the start menu for your users it just saves people asking and trying to find where these web links are so let's move on to the next bit of installing apps in in chune okay so far we've had it nice and easy but there are many more applications that your business might use you might have web browsers like Chrome or Firefox but lots of businesses also have certain lines of business applications that they use how can you install these via InTune well it's easy what you do is you package these applications up using a free Microsoft tool and then you can push these applications out using something called a win32 app in in tune it might be best that I show you okay so let's kick off let's first start and package up our application now the application I'm going to show you in this section of the video is just Firefox so I've gone to the Milla website and I've downloaded the exe for Firefox now this could be any application what you will also need is to go here so go to GitHub and go to the Microsoft GitHub and what we need is the InTune app util I don't know who thought of that name but it's absolutely genius it does what it says on the tin so if you just go and download that executable from here as well now if I go to my desktop you can see that I've got this utility and I've also got the Firefox exe install staller what I'm now going to do is go to my file explorer I'm going to go to the C drive and you can see I've created a folder called InTune apps now follow this section as I do it you can name your folder something different but just make sure you follow exactly what I'm doing otherwise you might get into a world of pain in there I'm going to put my in tune Win app util okay and then for every piece of software that I want to install I'm going to create a folder so I will create one called Firefox like that and within here I'm going to create two more folders so I will create one called downloador source and I will create a second one called InTune file okay so in download Source I'm going to drag this one okay so this is what we've got now so we've got a fir folder we've got a download source and we've got an empty in tune file so the next thing is we simply launch our utility so I will do that now and then this little box launches here I just move that to one side just organize the screen a bit better and here we are so the first question I'm getting asked is please specify the source folder so it's the source folder for our application so it's this one here download source okay copy that put that into our tool please specify the setup file okay so it's the same folder but it's now Firefox installer so I will add this onto the end okay so next is please specify the output folder and the output folder is where the InTune file will go so I'm going to put that into here copy that do you want to specify the catalog folder no thank you and then what should happen is our application here we go Firefox installer do inun win so this is the file that we need next it's over to InTune okay so go to InTune we go to apps we go to Windows we can click on add new app and this app type now is a Windows app win32 okay we click on select and the first question we get asked is where is the app package file well that's easy because we've just created it so you go to C drive InTune apps Firefox in tune file there she is okay put that into there click on okay okay we've got some basic information that we're going to Plum into here so I don't really want it called Firefox installer so I'll just call this Firefox we also need to put in a description so I will put that enter here okay publisher okay you don't have to put an app version but if you are pushing out different versions of the same application you might want to put that into here I won't again we can select a category I'll just put this under business we can show this in the company portal if we're using that okay I won't I will leave this as it is and click on next okay we've got some more options here firstly we've got an install command so we've got to plug the name of the executable in here but also if there's any additional commands so a common one is maybe a silent install or something like that so I'll put that in here now and then I want to install this silently so it will be forward SLS and then an uninstall command so what is that it's the complete unin uninstallation command line used to uninstall this app how do we find that out well a common way that I do it right click here go to run let's go to Reg edit and then I want local machine software Microsoft which is here right down to Windows there we go current version so I'll just expand that current version and then if we go right down again to uninstall and what you will see here there's lots of different applications the bottom that are installed on your computer so obviously I'm assuming I've got Firefox installed on this computer that I'm showing you so I'm making that assumption and then what we can do look we can see here Firefox and it's got an uninstall string so what I can do is I can copy this without the ears I can plug this into here and that's the going install string so the next bit is the allow available uninstall you can click on the I it shows what it is so if I select yes then users cannot install this from the company Port if I select no people can't so I will click on no for that the install Behavior as well we want to choose system for this we don't want to uninstall it as the user account especially if they not got local admin permissions the next bit is the device restart Behavior so what happens if this application needs a restart as part of its installation we've got some options here we can determine the behavior based on the return codes I will come back to those in a minute we can say no specific action at all even if the app needs a restart we can say the app install May force a device restart or in tune will force a mandatory device restart obviously it depends on the application it depends on your environment when you're installing it lots of different questions here uh I'm going to choose this one here determine Behavior based on return codes so here the return codes here okay whatever this app return code is once it's installed will determine what happens okay fair enough click on next and then what operating system architecture are we running 64 bit then we've got a minimum operating system that this app is going to get installed on again it depends on your environment but do you really want to be installing software on old versions of Windows do you really have old versions of Windows in your business I hope not so I would probably go for Windows 10 at 22 H2 now this is a nice little feature so these are requirements so the dis space required this is the free disc space needed so if I've got a PC and it's not got a lot of disc space needed and this application is going to use it all up that's going to cause a problem for the user it's going to cause a problem for the install so what I can do is say I want at least 500 mag of free dis space for this to be installed this same principle for the physical memory do I want to install applications on PCS with low memory is it not just going to slow it down even more so that is what these options are all about very useful I'm not going to choose any for this demo I'm going to click on to next now we're on to detection rules now how do we know if a piece of software has been installed well firstly I'm a human and I've got eyes so if I'm sat in front of the computer I know if a piece of software has been installed there might be an icon on the desktop and I might double click on it and launch that icon but how does InTune now the software has been installed and this is what this is we are setting something up so InTune can detect the presence of the application so I'm going to choose manually configure detection rules and then I'm going to create a detection rule the rule type to start with we've got MSI we've got file we've got registry now this will differ for different applications and sometimes within tune it takes a little bit of trial and error to get it working how you want it to but I'm going to show you my example now I'm going to choose registry okay so what I'm saying to InTune is I know when Firefox has installed because it will create a register entry in this path with this value name and if that register entry is there we know the software is installed okay so what is that registry entry if I go over to the registry now and I go to local machine software mozilla.org go into Milla and current version 135 and that's the version we're installing so if this register entry is here current version 135 we know the software is installed so what I've got to do now now I've got to Plum this in to my InTune here key path okay local machine software maa.org Milla that's the same as this here okay then I want current version is equal to 135.0 so that is the value name current version string comparison is equal to 135.0
okay so hopefully that all makes sense again with some applications it can be a little bit fiddly you got to test it out before hand but I'm going toit okay to that and I'm going to click on next now these are dependencies so this is where it's getting quite Advanced these dependencies are applications that must be installed before the application can be installed so again these are for more advanced software Solutions I'm just going to click on next for here so this is supersedence again another Advanced thing but again really useful we can tell in tune which applications are going to be directly updated or replace so when new versions of software come out what we can do is we can replace or update the old versions okay hope that makes sense click on next and again back to the assignments I'm going to put all devices here click on next review and create and we will create that application okay let's wait a bit see if it installs on our PC okay so our application Firefox you can see we've got something much installed successfully if I go to device user status you can see that Fred now should have Firefox let's just hop over to his PC and you can see we have Firefox okay and that is all working so that has installed successfully now at the start of the video you might remember we spoke about installing Microsoft 365 apps via InTune using an easy way now I found the best way to install Microsoft 365 apps in in tune is to use the win 32 app method that I've shown you with Firefox so in this next section I'm going to show you how to install Microsoft 365 apps using the win32 method now as you might be able to see it can be a bit fiddly but let's fiddle away okay the first web page going to need is this one here because we need to download something called the office deployment tool also in preparation if we go to my C drive you can see I've created a folder called ODT which just stands for office deployment tool so what I'll do is click on download and that will download the tool if I then open that file I accept the license and terms and click on continue now it's going to ask me where I want to store the extracted files you've guessed it my new folder on the C drive called ODT I will do that and we get this message here so just click on okay now if I go to this folder here now you can see that there's a couple of files there's an office setup file and there's a configuration file which is an XML file now this is just a standard one that is downloaded with Microsoft okay if I launch that you can see it looks a little bit like that however we don't want that one that is Microsoft's standard one so I'm going to delete that what I'm going to do is create our own office configuration file how do you do that well we go to this web page here which is called the office customization tool we can then configure this exactly how we want it so let's work through this now what architecture do we want to deploy we want 64bit which office suite do we want to deploy we've got all these options here if it's Microsoft 365 using as I demoed before it is the Microsoft 365 apps for Enterprise or business so I'll choose this one here then we've got an option to install things like Vio and project we want the current Channel and the latest version here's these options again so we might not need things like one drive desktop we might not want publisher you can choose exactly what you want here okay click on next the language sometimes it's easy to choose this one here match operating system I've had a few problems with that in the past so I like to choose the exact operating system one here we've got some additional languages which I don't need so click on next we'll choose office content delivery Network here then there's a couple of options and it depends on your scenario so the first one is show installation to the user so a popup will come up and say let's install it office you might want that you might not shut down running applications now if there's running office applications this is likely to fail so what you can do as part of this install is force it to shut them down again if your users are working it might not not be convenient but it's up to you and your environment click on next now we've got a few options here look we can uninstall any MSI versions of office including VI and project a couple of different options there which I will leave click on next we've got that familiar product activation which I talked about earlier user based or shared computer this is going to be userbase I also want to automatically accept the license so I will put that in there click on next we can put your company name in here if you want something like that click on next and then we've got lots of different application preferences okay so we can can configure office you've got all your applications along the top so for example you can configure office to display the developer tab in the ribbon that's just an example but you've got all these Outlook options that you can choose from I don't want to choose any of those so I'm going to click on finish now what you've got here look is all my settings these are the ones I've chosen and what I do is I click on export we'll choose this one here click on okay set the license terms and click on export what happens we get an XML file okay so I will open the folder I will copy this and I will place that also in my ODT file I will rename it something different there I'll just call it install Okay so I've got my setup file and an install XML what I also need is an uninstall XML so if I just minimize this page here and minimize this you can see I've opened a notepad and I've created an uninstall XML okay so I just need to check that's all okay that needs to be moved up a little bit and that should be good so what I'll do now is I will save this notepad file I will go to my C drive ODT and I will call this uninstall do XML okay save that document there let's just take a quick look again in my ODT file I've now got the data that I need okay okay it's now time to package these back up okay so if I go to C drive if I go to my InTune apps and let's launch this util again okay so again it wants the source folder this time the source folder if just go back here is this one here Plum that into there the setup file is this one so it's that setup. XE the output folder let's continue with what we did before so go back again go to InTune apps I'm doing it slightly differently but I'm sure you get the idea so the output folder here is this one and this is where it's going to dump there we we go I've now got my setup in tune win so this is for office so it's back to In Tune okay let's go to apps let's go to all apps let's go to create a new one again we're going to choose Win app win 32 click on select let's select the app package select the file that we've just created so it's C drive it's in tune apps it's office there is our package file and then we can start to fill this information in so I'll do that now Microsoft 365 apps description okay publisher okay again you can enter app versions if you want I'm going to put this as productivity I'll add that to there click on next okay here's the install command so what we put in here is setup.exe okay so if I just go back now to my this folder here so I want it to run setup. XE but I want it to use this file here if you remember this file is what we created our office customization tool so what I will put in here is setup.exe SLC configure install. XML so we're saying run that using this XML the uninstalled command is similar set up XE configure uninstall XML that's the file that we created again we'll leave these the same and we will click on next all this so I will say 64 bits again we'll leave that as that we won't fill any of these in but you know what they are from the previous part of the demo now we're on to detection rules so what detection rule are we going to use so in tune knows that this software has been installed well on this PC I'm using at the moment I have got office installed okay so if I go to this register key Here Local machine software Microsoft right down to Office Pro re plus retail you can see that when the software is installed this register entry is created and you can see in here we've got a display version so we've got a version of this office software so what I'm going to ask InTune to do is look out for this version okay I hope that makes sense so I'm going to copy this at the top here and I'm going to choose manually configure detection rules and then I'm going to create a new detection Rule now it's important to point out with any application that you're packaging up into a win32 app it can take a bit of trial and error and you've got to try and work around what detection roll is going to work this one is going to be a registry one the key path is what I've just copied here I'll just go to the front though and take that off the value name so again go back to the registry so we're looking in here for the display version so the display version going to cop the version is going to the value name here is display version okay and what detection method are we going to use we're going to use version comparison and the operator is greater than or equal to the version that we've got out of here okay so if that register enter is there InTune knows that this software has been installed click on next we've talked about dependencies in a previous video so we'll we'll avoid those supersedence assignments we're going to assign this to all devices for this click on next click on correct so that has been created we'll Monitor and we'll come back and see if that software has been installed so this happened I got a failure in in tune and I suppose this is a good example about how fiddly this can be sometimes if I go back to my virtual machine even though I've got a failure you can see that my office applications have all installed so it's succeeded yet into is reporting a failure why is that well if I go to device install status you can see here the application was not detected after installation so what does that mean if we go to properties I have to dig dig around at this and I was scratching my head of why it's not worked it's these detection rules okay I put here the key paath to the registry and it's right at the end I took this from my computer that I'm on and the register key is this at the end enus now with the setup file I was using if I go back to Red jedit on here it's NGB so this is the British version of office I was installing on here this is obviously a different version that I've got on my PC so it just goes to show how fiddly that is so the good good news is my applications have installed but the bad news is it's reporting in in tune like it hasn't so I would need to go in and modify that but I hope that's give you an idea about how this all works so there you have it installing applications using InTune now you might have gathered throughout this video that installing applications in in tune can be a bit tricky there's a lot of trial error and testing needed which brings me nicely back onto today's sponsor that's robo pack.com it makes
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2025-02-22 07:45
