Deploying Office 365 Benefit for Students to bursary devices?

[LRSFC_DanJ]

Over the past couple of years we've had a bursary programme which has included giving students who are assessed as having a need for one, a device that they can own and use at home and in the classroom.

 

We also have the Office 365 Benefit for staff and students, allowing them to use Office at home on their computers and mobile devices.

 

We're now expanding our bursary programme and the plan is that this year some of the bursary students will be receiving Windows 10 laptops. We'd like to be able to preinstall the Office 365 Benefit for Students software on it.

 

For Macs this is dead simple - the Office 365 admin portal provides a direct download of the .dmg file needed to install the software.

 

But for Windows there seems to be this horrendously and needlessly complicated Office Deployment Tool.

 

I tried to get my head around how this was supposed to be used but gave up extremely confused.

 

Is this the right tool to use to get Office 365 preloaded onto these machines? If so, how do I use it to do that? If not, what is the right way to do it? For example could I just download an Office trial version and then it would convert to a full version when the student logs in?

 

Thanks,

Dan Jackson (Lead ITServices Technician)

Long Road Sixth Form College

[jmak]

There are a few ways to do it....

 

The ones that come to mind are:

 

1) Deploy it as part of the image

 

2) Let them click the download button after they've logged into O365 for the first time on that machine - it becomes useable after a few seconds from my experience of doing it this way in my personal machine at home

 

Use the deployment tool you mentioned above. I used this when we moved from using Open Office for student machines, so wasn't re-imaging at the same time. I didn't find it totally straightforward - I asked a couple of questions on here - but I managed to achieve a customised install relatively easily. Iirc, it was a case of putting the MSI on a deployment share (which was just a universally accessible network share; the same one I use for all my software deployments) and editing the XML via a GUI. I then set up a GPO to deploy it. The only thing I got stuck on was when it kept rolling back part way through deployment. This turned out to be because the machines and their wireless were so slow that it was timing out.... I'd say that if you want to have it pre-installed it's the way to go.

 

One final thing: I think you're only allowed to do this if the machine is owned by the individual rather than the college. If you want to deploy 1:1 on college owned machines, you need a different licence.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

So just to clarify, these machines become 100% totally the property of the student, they are not to be college owned in any way shape or form and cannot use the college software images or the college's own Windows licenses.

 

We just want to set them up for the students beforehand, so they don't have to download Office 365 and antivirus themselves, they are there already and they just need to log in with the appropriate Office 365 username and password.

[jmak]

It's a while since I used the Office deployment tool and things have moved on a bit, but the principles are the same.

 

If you want a fully installed version of Office without visiting each machine, you'll need to deploy either with SCCM (which I can't afford, so I haven't tried) or include in the image, or by GPO (which would require the machines to be on the domain). All of these are (relatively) quite a bit of work and would require use of the deployment tool.

 

You can distribute the install files to the local machine and then run the setup.exe from the deployment tool, but that requires user intervention, so no better than getting them to install using the supported method.

 

Unless you really want to customise their install (eg exclude some applications or change default file formats etc), I would just give them the direct URL for the download/install. It's two clicks: one to follow the link and another on the Install button.

 

Follow this link:

 

http://portal.office.com/OLS/MySoftware.aspx

 

If you're not signed in already, you'll go via the log in page, but you are then taken directly to the download link - no need to hunt around in the O365 console.

[LRSFC_DanJ]

All of these are (relatively) quite a bit of work and would require use of the deployment tool.

 

You can distribute the install files to the local machine and then run the setup.exe from the deployment tool, but that requires user intervention, so no better than getting them to install using the supported method.

 

I don't have a problem with having to do something individually on each machine; we've been doing that anyway with our existing bursary programme of Android devices.

 

If the Deployment Tool is the right/only way to get the Office software preinstalled on there ready for them to log in, then is there a step by step easy guide on how to use it to achieve that somewhere? I tried reading the Microsoft documentation for it but was none the wiser afterward.

[jmak]

Hmmm

 

I used this: https://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0000464 but I was trying to do something slightly different...

 

I've had a read and a search and this makes sense to me for what I think you're trying to do:

 

http://microsoftmercenary.com/wp/how-to-customize-office-with-the-office-365-click-to-run-deployment-tools-2/

 

but I'm sitting in the sun in my garden now, so can't try anything out

 

I'll have another look next week if you're still stuck.