Configuration and automating Microsoft Click2Run deployment

Abstract:

This paper takes full leverage on https://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-

Scripts/XmlEditor.html “Microsoft Office ProPlus Install Toolkit” as a core tool to configure,

automate, and deploy Office365 Click2Run as it is the most efficient and effective tool available

Microsoft has come up so far to date.

Objectives:

When it comes to deploying Office365 Click2Run (C2R) Office suite, there are fundamentally 2

objectives.

1. Making/Getting an installable desired/customized .MSI file that will streamline/download

and install desired/customized Office365 Office Suite(s) directly from Microsoft.

a. Client PCs need the internet connection to download the Office365 software from

Microsoft directly.

2. Installing/Deploying downloaded desired/customized Office suite(s) offline installer for

deployment through GPO.

a. Client PCs don’t need the internet connection to download the Office365 software

from Microsoft directly as it will install the office suite from the local network

drive.

There are many ways to achieve these two stated objectives, but I am going to lay down the

easiest yet most effective and efficient steps to get it done successfully.

We are going to make full use of available “ready-made tool”, Microsoft Office ProPlus Install

Toolkit for the rest of the guide.

Objective 1

Getting/Making a configuration file to download desired Office Suite.

Some administrators achieve this by downloading Office Deployment Tool 2013/2016 and

modifying default configuration.xml file to suite the requirements, such as desired Office Suite,

32/64 bits, languages, setting download path, running it all together from the command line, etc.

For majority it’s still quite a list of tasks to accomplish easily and comfortably and not sure and

understand why exactly they have to do that.

The easiest and most efficient way to accomplish is about to come here.

Go to https://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html

Click on “Install Toolkit”.

Click “Launch Installation”

Click “Install”

After the installation is finished, you will be presented with the following Wizard to start the

configuration. Choose “Create new Office365 Proplus installer” and click Start”.

At the “Products” tab, choose desired Office Suite you want to download based on the license

you have with Microsoft.

Product

o Office365 Proplus

o Office 365 for Business

Edition

o 32

o 64

If you have a mixed of 32 and 64 bit PCs, choose 32 bit or 64 bit first and repeat the step

detailing here for either version.

Channel

o It’s recommended that you always choose the default

“Current” (latest version)

Visio

o An optional and standalone office product that you want to include/bundle

it together in this configuration.

o Tick in the square box and choose an appropriate Visio license that you

subscribe or have with Microsoft.

Project

o An optional and standalone office product that you want to include/bundle

it together in this configuration.

o Tick in the square box and choose an appropriate Visio license that you

subscribe or have with Microsoft.

At the Languages tab

By default “English is the Primary” language for the Office suite we chosen earlier, but if the

users would like it in a different language(s) you could choose it (them) too.

Click “Add Language” to add additional Language(s) if required. For example, English is your

default primary language but you would like to add French language alongside with English

language.

You can also remove Language(s).

It is not necessary that you must remove a language in order to use another. For example,

English is a default primary language but you like to add on Chinese alongside English and want

Chinese language to be a default primary language.

You would first add Chinese language and select Chinese language and click “Set Primary” to

set Chinese language as a Primary language.

If you are OK with English as the default Primary language, just leave it as it is.

Don’t need to do anything at “Optional” tab.

Depends on the Office365 Plans such as E1, E3 and E5 or Microsoft software licensing

agreement, you could include and exclude particular office product(s) from the Office Suite.

We don’t make any changes or configuration at the Download tab as this is a separate major

objective of the guide and will cover in detail later. Click Next.

We don’t make any changes or configuration at the Updates tab as we don’t need to do anything.

Just click Next.

At the Options tab, you configure how much user interactions you would want. For most

deployment cases, it’s a silent and background installation, and no user interactions required.

You can configure what Display Level you want to display during the installation, such as

progress bar, error dialog, completion screen, etc.

Whether or not you want end users to acknowledge End User License Agreement (EULA), etc.

You could leave this Options tab as default, and choose installation mode as “Silent” at the next,

Generate tab.

I recommend you leave this Options tab as default and click Next.

At the Generate tab, choose as follows;

o Installation type = MSI

o Silent Install = Yes

o Filie Path = Browse and select a folder where you want to save an installable

customized OfficeProPlus.MSI file.

Click Generate to generate a customized installable .msi file.

OfficeProPlus.msi is a default filename. It’s a good practice and idea that you rename it to a

more descriptive and easily differentiable file name, like OfficeProPlus_32bit.msi as you would

need to go through the whole same steps again to generate for 64 bit MSI file for 64 bit PCs. And

that time you would rename it to OfficeProPlus_64bit.msi instead.

The wizard is generating OfficeProPlus_32bit.msi file under E:\msi\ folder.

Now I see the newly generated customized OfficeProPlus_32bit.msi. As you could see I also

did the same step to generate a customized OfficeProPlus_62bit.msi file for 64 bit PCs –

remember to select “64 bit” at the Products tab.

The objective so far until here is to get a customized and installable .MSI file that you are going

to distribute to the rest of end users.

Distributing OfficeProPlus_32bit.msi and OfficeProPlus_62bit.msi files

Strategy

Once you have installable customized MSI files, create a two new network shared folders, for

example, \\fileserver\ and map to a network drive like P.

Create “Office365 Proplus 32 bit” and place OfficeProPlus_32bit.msi in it

Create “Office365 Proplus 64 bit” and place OfficeProPlus_64bit.msi in it

Informing end users

Start with a small number of users like 10 users with 32 bit PCs, and email to them something

like:

Hi All users,

“Please be informed that Office365 Professional Plus 2016 is ready and go to \\fileserver\

Office365 Proplus 32 bit\ and double-click on OfficeProPlus_32bit.msi file before the end of

the day”.

Once the end users double-click on OfficeProPlus_32bit.msi file, it will automatically install

the Office ProPlus 2016 in the background silently (remember we chosen “Silent Installation

Mode”).

Please remember that this method will require users’ PCs to have the Internet connection as it

will directly stream down/download from the Microsoft cloud.

Objective 2

To download a complete offline O365 Office Suite 2016 (32 or 64 bit )

To deploy the O365 Office Suite through GPO

Rerun the Office 365 Proplus Install Toolkit again and select desired Office Product and version,

and click Next.

Create a folder, browse and point to the folder you created. Click “Download” to start

downloading a complete offline O365 Office365 latest version, Office2016.

It will take a while depending on your bandwidth, once the download completed, it will show

“100%”.

You will see that there will be a folder E:\Office365_OfflineInstaller\CC and there will be a

folder called, office.

You need to copy “office” folder to the Active Directory Domain Controller server.

Create a folder structure, c:\software\Office2016 on Active Directory Domain Controller and

copy the “office” folder mentioned to c:\software\Office2016\office as follow.

Download Office Deployment Tool 2016 here, extract to same path as follow, renamed default

configuration.xml to config.xml.

Ensure you have the following configuration set in the config.xml file, remember to change

“OfficeClientEdition”, “Product ID” and “SourcePath” to suit your environment. My AD

DCk’s IP is 10.10.10.2

Go to http://c7solutions.com/2015/10/installing-office-2016-click-to-run-via-group-policy and

save the following as _InstallOffice2016GPO.cmd

And follow the steps mentioned there to automatically and silently deploy Office365 Office

Suite 2016 through GPO.