Hi Peter

We’ve switched to using Office 365 ProPlus Click-to-Run (C2R) over the summer as part of our Windows 10 deployment, and so far all seems to be working well, this was primarily for integration with Office 365 services, feature updates & better consistency with versions staff & students are using at home (from their Office 365 licenses), particularly with Microsoft announcing that they’ll cease integration with Office 365 services for VL versions of Office desktop from 2020.

Click-to-Run packages are based on App-V technology, but aren’t dependent on the App-V client being enabled or configured, no streaming is required and you can create an offline deployment using the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) 2016, we use Shared Computer Activation which allows users to activate the Office 365 applications but doesn’t count towards their 5 installations, there are some requirements for this including that users must be correctly licensed for Office 365 ProPlus and you can’t use things like mandatory profiles as a token is created on activation, you’ll also want to ensure ADFS is enabled and working correctly for activation, some further details can be found in the following blog https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/educloud/2015/03/20/how-to-setup-shared-computer-activation-step-by-step-for-your-education-environment/

One problem you may have is if you also use Project & Visio, only a single method of activation is supported on a client i.e. either Shared Computer Activation or KMS, while you can add Project Online Essentials free on an Office 365 Education plan, it doesn’t allow use of the desktop client and both Project Online Professional (which does allow use of Project 2016 desktop) and Visio Pro for Office 365 are paid only subscriptions, so it’s not supported to use the VL versions of Project & Visio with C2R Office 365 ProPlus using Shared Computer Activation (SCA).

There are several options for updates including ConfigMgr (which has a nice reporting node for Office 365 Client Management and versions) and WSUS, you can configure updates according to requirements and your environment, but new builds for Office 365 ProPlus are regularly released so you’ll need a robust piloting and change process for deployment. Group Policies are simple and are managed via the standard Office 2016 ADMX templates.

Hope this helps.

Hi, has anyone moved to or run a pilot of Office Click to Run yet…?

I’d welcome any insight into your findings from roll outs or pilots to either your staff or student environments. In short, MS are pushing us to this but with little detailed info (that I can find) on the implications. Project online is my current issue, but other features only available in CtR have cropped up.

Office is a key app (we have SfB on prem as our primary telephone system) and I simply don’t have a good enough understanding for the implications of the change. I think I’ve done the reading that exists i.e. they can’t run together, ODT can do online or offline, Project and Visio still use KMS etc…

But detail and implications are lacking, my key areas of concern are:

Licensing implications, impact upon current campus agreements etc – our Purchasing team are working on this, but it’s not clear to me at this time.

How it works (single, multi-user, machine?), how does it license itself (one assumes you don’t always need an internet connection)?

How it updates (permissions and control), can a user do it, can we control it…are GPs available and similar to the MSI versions?

It is streamed / virtualised with a flavour of App-V (I guess similar to UWA - AppX) but seemingly no streaming services run (I’m guessing this means our existing App-V apps will be unaffected)?

Its support for plugins, which I assume is none until the vendors re-work them?

Can RemoteApp be used as an interim to Provide CtR (whole package or individual apps)?

Anyone with insights into the above would be greatly received, happy to send back findings to the list if others are in a similar position (inc after our own testing / pilot as required). I have also asked our MS account manager. Many thanks in advance.

P.S. I did search the archives and I didn’t find anything inc within the O365 groups.

Kind Regards,

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