We've been deploying Office 365 for a few years now. I would like to say that
it's been great but I'd be lying through my teeth. This year when we started
looking at upgrading our Office 365 2013 users to 365 2016, we were seriously
talking about going back to Office 2016 perpetual licenses cause 365 has been
that fun...we did decide to stay with 365 though.
Here are the things I have learned and would highly recommend. Hope this helps
you out, feel free to ask questions.
1. Research the different ways of updating and decide on the best option for
your environment
* We have been updating 365 2016 using SCCM software updates and it has
gone very poorly and seeing a lot of failures or client issues.
* If you do decide to use SCCM for updates, I would not recommend to
deploy Office updates with Windows updates. Keep them separate, it has worked
better for us and we have seen less failures.
* Used a DFS share for 2013 and it worked really good. We're
considering going back to this instead of SCCM.
2. Look at all the options in the xml file
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Configuration-options-for-the-Office-2016-Deployment-Tool-d3879f0d-766c-469c-9440-0a9a2a905ca8
* Make sure to specify a version in your xml file. If you don't, then
it will automatically upgrade during the install regardless of the "Updates"
setting in the xml file.
* If you deal with multiple languages, specify en-us as the first
language, whatever language is in the xml file first will be the default
language of Office.
* Display level "none" will be a silent install and you will not see any
error messages. If you choose Full, then the users/IT will see the normal
progress bar and full error messages. I switched all of our SCCM packages to
full display level and it has helped a ton.
* If you have multiple users logging onto one computer that need to use
Office, then for that single computer, you need to add the
SharedComputerLicensing property to the xml file.
* There are xml file builders out there that make it easier, but you
still have to understand what's in the xml file and what it does
https://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html
* If you would like an example of what I use, let me know and I'll share
it.
3. Add-ons as Eric stated
* Make sure all your supported add-ons work with 2016. We also use SAP
Analysis for Office and EPM Excel add-ins, but we are on newer versions of
these that do support Office 365 2016.
4. If you need to contact MS support....Office 365 support only supports
activation and installation. Anything else, you need to open a MS software
assurance ticket.
5. When troubleshooting issues in Office, there is an quick repair and an
online repair. Quick scans and replaces corrupted files. Online repair is a
overwrite of all files. We usually use the Office scrub script to uninstall
Office completely and then reinstall as doing this fixes most issues faster
than doing repairs.
6. Get used to keeping it up to date like Windows 10. Only 2 builds in
deferred channel will be supported. Like Windows 10, we have to constantly
test new builds of Office 365.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Eric Morrison
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2017 11:11 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [mssms] RE: O365 in Enterprise
We've just started looking to deploy it, but we're going to use ConfigMgr. We
have to continue using 2013 for folks that are using SAP EPM Excel add-ins
because the version of SAP we're on doesn't support Office 2016 yet. Everyone
else will get O365 ProPlus CB.
If you have ConfigMgr, it will make your life a lot easier managing and
deploying O365. If not, you still can manage it with GPOs and custom answer
files.
Eric
From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael K Murray
Sent: Friday, June 2, 2017 6:24 PM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [mssms] O365 in Enterprise
Are any of you using Office 365 in your enterprise environment? We've been
deploying the regular enterprise version of Office, but it doesn't support the
focused inbox feature. My manager has asked me to look into 365 instead.
If you're using it, any assistance would be appreciated. Deployment guide, etc.
Thanks!
Best Regards,
Mike Murray
Desktop Engineer/IT Consultant - IT Support Services
California State University, Chico
530.898.4357
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Remember, Chico State will NEVER ask you for your password via email!
For more information about recognizing phishing scam emails go to:
http://www.csuchico.edu/isec/basics/spam-and-phishing.shtml
