Systems Management

Office 365 Deployment Series with MEMCM – Post 1 – Intro & PreReqs

Gary Blok

Published on: May 19, 2020

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Preface: So I wrote this blog series about a week before Microsoft decided to change the product name from Office 365 to Microsoft 365, then rebrand the office channels and add a new one.
While I’m going to do my best to update these posts, I’m sure I’ll miss some references, so I apologize now for any inconsistencies. As always, feel free to hit me up on Twitter to ask any questions. – Gary Blok (@gwblok)

Now, on to the first post:

This post will go over the Deployment and Maintenance of Office 365 using Microsoft’s Endpoint Manager, Configuration Manager (MEMCM / SCCM). In this series we will cover:

Pre-Reqs: Client Settings, Enabling Updates
Office Options (Configuration)
Channel, Software Addons / Removals, Config Options
Deployment Methods / Strategies
Use CDN for content or pull content from ConfigMgr
How Deployment Methods function
Notes from the field.

Configuration Manager has a node dedicated to Office 365. [MS Docs] We’re going to leverage it for this series, but I’ll also point to parts of the process that can be done outside of CM for additional flexibility. We’re also going to cover prerequisites for these features. [MS Docs]

Prerequisites

Client Settings

I’ve added these to the main Default Client Settings but show them in a new Client Setting for example. The first one is enabling CM to manage the Office Updates. [MS Docs]

Office 365 Client Management — Enable management of the Office 365 Client Agent = YES

Hardware Inventory for Office Information [MS Docs]

Group Policy / Enable Data Collection [MS Docs]

Group Policy Management — Added a Registry Key for Users to enable data collection

‍

Office 365 Collection [Used to deploy Updates ]

Office 365 Collection Query — Query Based collection to use later for when we set up the ADR to patch office. This is OPTIONAL, and I’d probably skip it if I were you, but just wanted to show you how.

Software Updates

Let’s add Office 365 updates to our software updates list. [MS Docs]

Note, in POST 5, I got much more in-depth and show more images about getting updates going, then monitoring systems, but for now, just the basics.

Now let’s create the ADR [MS Docs]

Office 365 Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard — Click Create an ADR, then choose the Office 365 Client Updates template. I’ve targeted the collection we created for Office

Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard — Defaults

Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard Architecture — Under Software Updates, you can change it to fit your needs, but since I’m deploying Office x64, I’m limiting to x64 and setting the Released date to the last 1 month. Clicking Preview confirms the patches that will be made available to that collection.

Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard Evaluation Schedule — I’ve set the Eval to run on a schedule, the day after Patch Tuesday.

Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard Deployment Schedule — I’ve left the Deployment Schedule as default because it works for me. I did check the box for “Delay enforcement…”

Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard User Experience — I’ve chosen “Hide in Software Center…” because I want it to only show up in the Office Ribbon.

Create Automatic Deployment Rule wizard Deployment Package — I’ve set this to “No deployment package”, because I’m cool with my clients going out to Microsoft to get updates, but you’ll want to follow your standard update processes.

Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard Download Settings — Here I’ve set it to always download.

Ok, now we’ve got everything in place to support Office 365. In the next post, we’ll go over making the actual office deployment.

Check out all posts within this series:

Office 365 Deployment Series with MEMCM – Post 2 – Creating the Office Installer – Simple

Office 365 Deployment Series with MEMCM – Post 3 – Creating the Office Installer – Advanced

Office 365 Deployment Series with MEMCM – Post 4 – Deployment Methods

Office 365 Deployment Series with MEMCM – Post 5 – Office Updates / ADR

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