Deploy Office 2016 at logon, before users can open an application

[CAWJames]

Evening all,

 

Whats the best way to deploy an Office 2016 upgrade to all users, and have it do it at "Welcome" so they have to wait for the upgrade before getting a desktop or not give any access to desktop till its done? I don't want to give them the choice!

 

Usually I deploy applications with SCCM, but not sure how it would work, as the first thing users do is open an office application. Even if I tell them not to(Outlook is Office, who knew!!). If I advertise the upgrade, then they would get policy after logon + x minutes, then it would start while they have office open, or is there a tick box for do it at login on next login and wait till its finished?

 

We are currently on 2010 and have access to SCCM with MDT integrated and have full AD.

 

I'm sure I did this in the pre-SCCM days when we went 2007 to 2010, but time has passed and the past is misty!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

James

[free780]

I think its a out of hours job. PC wakes up. Uninstall old version. Install new version. You can use the application model but turn on supercedence for office 2010/2013. A reboot is really needed for the uninstall and the install. Or just reimage if its easier. Or course you need reliable WOL for this to happen.

[Arthur]

the first thing users do is open an office application. Even if I tell them not to (Outlook is Office, who knew!!).

If doing it out of hours is not an option you could script the uninstallation/installation using the PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit. This would enable you to deploy Office after users have already logged in (a.k.a. "Interactive Mode" in PSADT), give them the choice of deferring the upgrade and block the execution of all of the Office programs until the installation has been successfully completed (among many other things). e.g.

 

# Abort with error code 1618 if machine is on battery power. Retry after four hours [size=1](if the script is deployed as an Application in SCCM)[/size].
If(-not (Test-Battery)) { 
   Exit-Script 1618
}

Show-InstallationWelcome -CloseApps "excel,groove,onenote,infopath,onenote,outlook,mspub,powerpnt,winword,winproj,visio" -BlockExecution -AllowDefer -DeferTimes 3 -CheckDiskSpace

Show-InstallationProgress

etc.

 

Read the included documentation for details on how to use it with SCCM. There's also an example script for Office 2013 in the .zip which you could use as a starting point for yours.

 

Displaying messages is easy too.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 10, 2017 by Arthur

[FN-GM]

Evening all,

 

Whats the best way to deploy an Office 2016 upgrade to all users, and have it do it at "Welcome" so they have to wait for the upgrade before getting a desktop or not give any access to desktop till its done? I don't want to give them the choice!

 

Usually I deploy applications with SCCM, but not sure how it would work, as the first thing users do is open an office application. Even if I tell them not to(Outlook is Office, who knew!!). If I advertise the upgrade, then they would get policy after logon + x minutes, then it would start while they have office open, or is there a tick box for do it at login on next login and wait till its finished?

 

We are currently on 2010 and have access to SCCM with MDT integrated and have full AD.

 

I'm sure I did this in the pre-SCCM days when we went 2007 to 2010, but time has passed and the past is misty!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

James

 

Do it out of hours and set SCCM to only run the installer when the machine is logged off?

[CAWJames]

Thanks for the options, the deployment toolkit looks interesting! Unfortunately, we have drilled it into people to shutdown when they go home, and I have found WOL to be lacking, at least in our environment, so it needs to be done when they login, to ensure an install. We can't have a mixed environment of 2010 and 2016, mainly from a support headache point of view.

 

Thanks again,

 

James

[gshaw]

We did our 2007 > 2013 upgrade as a self-service deployment for users and told them to do it over lunch break. We use a product called ZENworks for ours but Arthur's method above looks like it does the same kind of process.

[kennysarmy]

It might be old fashioned but I'm going to do our Summer migration from Office 2010 to Office 2016 manually by getting the techies to visit each PC and kick off the installer, that way we can also address any cabling issues, give the PC a visual check etc.

[free780]

I did that Office 2000 to 2010. I think I ended up using vnc for staff PCs.