Control Office365 Pro-Plus version/channels with Intune – 2

Standard

Some time ago I wrote a very detailed and long blogpost on how you could control the Office 365 Pro-Plus version and update channel through the ADMX-Backed policy functionality within Microsoft Intune. Today this is not needed anymore and a easier solution is available. The Version and Update Channel of the Office 365 Pro-Plus Click-to-Run client can now be controlled through the ‘Administrative Templates’ policy type which is currently in preview. In this blogpost I will explain how you configure the new and easy way!

As explained the ‘Administrative Templates’ policy type is at this moment in preview which means you can test this functionality, but functionality can be changed when it’s in preview. That said based on my own tests this is working smoothly without any issues. I will start with explaining how you need to configure the policy and I will end with showing the end user experience when this policy is applied on the Windows 10 client.

  1. First go to https://portal.azure.com
  2. Open the Intune section and go to Device Configuration. Click on Profiles and click then on Create to create a new policy
  3. Enter a name for the policy, select Windows 10 and later as platform. Next step is to select Administrative Templates (preview) as policy type and click on Create.
  4. When the policy is created click on Settings.
  5. In the search bar search for ‘update’. Now all policy settings with update in it will show up:
  6. Now click on Enable Automatic Updates and select Enabled as the value and select OK.
  7. Now click on Update Channel to configure the update channel. Select enabled and your update channel and click on OK.
  8. I’m also configuring the setting ‘Hide option to enable or disable updates’ so that users cannot disable the installation of updates:
  9. As a result, you should now see that the settings are enabled in the overview:

  10. The only thing we need to do now is assign the policy to a group of users. Click on Assignments and Select a Group and click on Select and click on Save.
  11. Now the policy with settings is created and it’s assigned to a group of users.

 

Now let’s look on how this will look like on a Windows 10 client. I’ve done my testing on a Windows 10 1803 client with currently an Office 365 Pro-Plus version installed which is configured in the Insider channel as you can see in the screenshot below:

Now let’s see what happens when the policy arrives on the client:

Policy received by the client:

Office 365 Pro-Plus configured in the correct update channel:

Now we have proved that the Office 365 Pro-Plus client will be downgraded to the version of the configured Update channel. Now let’s see what happens when we try to upgrade the Office365 Pro-Plus client by configuring the Insider channel:

As you can see the Office 365 Pro-Plus client will be updated to the version of the configured Update channel. So we can make the following conclusion:

With configuring the update channel will the Office 365 Pro-Plus be downgraded to the right configured version?
Answer: YES!

With configuring the update channel will the Office 365 Pro-Plus be upgraded to the right configured version?
Answer: YES!