Example: Installing MS Office 365 as a Custom App

How To Install Office 365/Office 2019 as a Custom App in Faronics Deploy.

1. Download the Office365 Deployment Tool.

2. Create a public share with read permissions for everyone. See this Microsoft support article for help with this.

3. On the machine with the share, copy the Deployment Tool to the folder and execute it. It will download setup.exe and some example configuration files for Office365 x64/x86 and Office 2019.

These files can be manually edited, but this is not recommended.

4. Use the Microsoft Office Deployment Configuration Tool page to create a customized configuration file:

https://config.office.com/deploymentsettings

This page will allow you to create a deeper level of customization for what products will be installed, what type of updating should be applied to the product automatically, and even customizations to the products themselves.

5. It is strongly recommended to configure a log file path for the installation process in case of any troubleshooting.

6. Download the configuration file and leave a copy in the shared folder created in step 2.

7. Run setup.exe to download the source files to the share location using a command prompt:

<local path to share folder>\setup.exe /configure configuration_file.xml

This step may take some time to complete. The setup files are several gigabytes in size.

8. In the Deploy Console, click on Custom App.

9. Provide a name for the custom application to display in the Deploy Console.

10. Enter in the source for the installer location under Enter URL: \\server\sharename\setup.exe

11. Configure the architecture type desired.

12. Under "Install Command Line", provide the remainder of the command to install Office: /configure \\server\sharename\configuration_file.xml

13. Set the timeout value to be 60 minutes at a minimum as the install may take some time when applied to several machines at once.

14. Perform a test install against one of your machines.

The Office installation can fail if there are any Office components already installed on the machine. Consider running the Office Cleanup tool on your machines to remove any traces and provide the best chance for success.

Once the test installation completes, it should now be visible under Custom Apps in the Deploy Console. It is now ready to be pushed to other machines.