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How to deploy Office 365 with Specops Deploy

Many customers have asked me how to deploy Office 365 so I’ve put together this how-to guide showing how to deploy the application Office 365 Click-to-Run with Specops Deploy App.

First you need to download Office 2016 deployment tool for Click-to-Run.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219422.aspx

Start the deployment tool and it will extract 2 files, one setup.exe file and one configuration.xml file.

Then create a folder on your file server called Office 365.

Edit your xml file, in my case I use this in our demo environment:

<Configuration>

  <Add SourcePath="\\demo.local\dfs\Install\Microsoft\office365" OfficeClientEdition="32" Branch="Current">

    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">

                <Language ID="en-us" />

                </Product>

  </Add>

                <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />

                <Updates Enabled="TRUE" />

</Configuration>

You need to change the path to your Office 365 folder to suit your environment.

Then open up a command prompt as administrator and run this command:

Setup.exe /download configuration.xml

A new folder called office\data and files will appear in your Office 365 folder on your file share after 15-20 minutes or so.

Now we need to create 2 more xml files, they should be called Install.xml and Uninstall.xml and be placed on same place as the first configuration.xml and setup.exe was placed.

Install.xml:

<Configuration>

  <Add OfficeClientEdition="32" Branch="Current">

    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">

                <Language ID="en-us" />

                </Product>

  </Add>

                <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />

                <Updates Enabled="TRUE" />

</Configuration>

Uninstall.xml:

<Configuration>

    <Remove All="TRUE" />

    </Configuration>

Now when the Installation is downloaded we can start building a package in Specops Deploy App Control Center.

Create the package as a legacy package.

Deploy Office 365 1

Install Command Parameters:

/Configure install.xml

Deploy Office 365 2

Uninstall command:

%SpecopsDeployExecuteDir%\setup.exe

Uninstall Command Parameter:

/Configure uninstall.xml

Deploy Office 365 3

Create a Target – in my example I created a Target Called Microsoft Office 365 pointing to two criteria. The first criteria is for a group I called Office 365, the second criteria is for a group called Office 2016 where I chose Toggle not as shown in the picture.

Deploy Office 365 4

This means that we cannot have a machine with both Office 2016 (MSI) and Office 365 (Click-and-Run) on the same machine. Why? This is because you cannot have a Click-and-Run application and a MSI installation from the same generation on a machine. For example, if you have Office 2013 (MSI) installed then this Click-and-Run Office 365 (2016) will work together.

Also you cannot have 2 Click-and-Run applications like Office 2013 and Office 365 (2016) on the same machine either.

The last part is to create a deployment, make sure you tick the box Uninstall the package if the package falls “Out of the Scope of Management” in the deployment options tab.

Deploy Office 365 5

Deploy Office 365 6

Now you are able to deploy Office 365 with the help of Specops Deploy.

Happy deployment!

Publication date: November 20, 2015
Modification date: October 30, 2023

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