Deploy and configure Office 2013 Click to Run (SCCM 2012)

In this post I will show you how to configure Office 2013 click to run and how to deploy it to your clients using SCCM 2012.

Using Office click to run has many advantages, but if your internet connection is slow or unreliable, it can result in total catastrophe for your users. Today, with the high speed connections that we have both with cable and over 4G, this should not be a problem, but still it’s something to think about.

The main advantages of using Office click to run are the following:

• You get Office quickly over the Internet. (No need for DVDs and so on)
• Office click to run is always updated, so after an installation, there is no need to download any updates or service packs before you can start using it.
• Office click to run can also coexist with earlier versions of already installed Office products.
• It’s based on Microsoft App-V technology, so it runs in it’s own bubble, but you can still use locally installed plugins.

When combining the Office click to run and SCCM, you get the best of two worlds. You can easily deploy the files to you clients, but the size of the package is minimal, which will make the deployment much faster. (If you include it in your task sequence for example)

The first thing we need to do is to download the Office Deployment Tool, which can be found at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36778

Run the file we just downloaded, accept the EULA and chose where to install the files, I chose to download it to C:\Temp\Office

In the folder you selected, you should now have two files:

• configuration.xml
• setup.exe

Next, we need to edit the configuration.xml file to specify what components to download from Office 2013 and where to store the files. (These files will be used as our source-files when creating the package).
When you open the xml-file, you will see the following:

<Configuration>

  <!--  <Add SourcePath="\\Server\Share\" OfficeClientEdition="32" >
    <Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
    <Product ID="VisioProRetail">
      <Language ID="en-us" />
    </Product>
  </Add>  -->

  <!--  <Updates Enabled="TRUE" UpdatePath="\\Server\Share\" /> -->

  <!--  <Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />  -->

  <!--  <Logging Path="%temp%" />  -->

  <!--  <Property Name="AUTOACTIVATE" Value="1" />  -->

</Configuration>

Everything that is between <!–  and –> will not read when using the file, so I edited the file to the following:

<Configuration>
	<Add SourcePath="C:\Temp\Office" OfficeClientEdition="32" >
    	<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      	<Language ID="en-us" />
	</Product>
	</Add>

	<Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
	<Logging Path="%temp%" />
</Configuration>

This will download the the files for the 32-bit, English version, of Office 365 Pro Plus to the folder “C:\Temp\Office”. It will also accept the EULA automatically and create the log under C:\Windows\Temp.

Next, open a command prompt as administrator and browse to the folder where we downloaded the files and run the following command:

• setup.exe /download configuration.xml

Depending on your connection and what products you have chosen, the download may take everything from 10 and up. (This one took me about 15 minutes on 25 Mbit/s)

Now when you open the folder, you will see that a new folder has been created called “Office” and in this folder one called “Data”.

In the “Data” folder, you will see two *.cab files and another folder, in this case called “15.0.4693.1002”. This folder contains the media where Office will be streamed from. The files should be the following, make sure all files are downloaded since the installation will fail otherwise. (You might need to run the command again if you are missing files)

• i321033.cab
• i641033.cab
• s320.cab
• s321033.cab
• stream.x86.en.us.dat
• stream.x86.x-none.dat

The next step is to edit the configuration.xml file once more, removing the first part where we said to download the files to “C:\Temp\Office”. By doing this, the files will be stored in the cache and no files needs to be preloaded. If you’ve followed this guide, the file shoudl look like the following:

<Configuration>
	<Add OfficeClientEdition="32" >
    	<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
      	<Language ID="en-us" />
	</Product>
	</Add>

	<Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
	<Logging Path="%temp%" />
</Configuration>

Create the package in SCCM

Now, copy all of the files to your source-library for SCCM, and by all files I mean;

• setup.exe
• configuration.xml
• The Office folder

In SCCM, go to “Software Library” -> Application Management.

Right click on Packages and select “Create Package”. (This can also be deployed as an Application, but I will not go in to this at the moment)

Fill in the details and mark the box “This Package Contains Source Files” and browse to the folder where you copied the files.

On the next page of the wizard, select “Standard Program” and click on Next.

Fill in all the program details and use the following as Command line:
setup.exe /Configure Configuration.xml

Then fill in any additional requirements and when finished, update all of your distribution points with the newly created package.

That’s all there is to it, now you are ready to either create a deployment to your clients or to add the package in your task sequence.