Microsoft 365 Apps on gal.vin

Office Update Utility - Update 22.07.30

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 16:06:07 +0100

Version 22.07.30

Changes:

Changed how the removal of old update files is done. Old versions will be removed regardless, -Days option has been removed.

Office Update Utility is available from:

For full change log and more information, visit my site.

Support My Work

PayPal

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

Deploying Microsoft Office with MDT

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:53:53 +0000

Before You Start

The modern Microsoft Office suite is now only available as a ‘Click-to-Run’ installation, which changes how the installation package is obtained, configured and deployed.

These are the resources we’ll be using in this guide.

Creating a Config File

Configuration of the Office suite is now done via an XML file. You can generate one by using the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center. Simply go to the site and click on the “Create a new configuration” button.

Under “Products and releases” choose what architecture and Office Suite you require, how often you want Office to update - I recommend the “Monthly Enterprise Channel”, and which apps to include or exclude.
For “Language” either choose specific languages or “Match Operating System”.
Under “Installation options” you should choose “Local source” and enter the “Source path” of: Z:\Applications\[Your-Office-Install] as this will be where the files are stored in MDT. Z:\ is automatically mapped to %deployroot% during an MDT Task Sequence.
For the “Update and upgrade” options this will depend on whether you plan on Office updating from the internet on the systems once it is deployed, or if you want to have a central Office update on the local network (maybe using my Office Update Utility), or if you are using Config Manager.
For the Upgrade options, these can be disabled as we will be installing office as part of a clean build of Windows.
Under “Licensing and activation” you will need to set “Automatically accept the EULA” to enabled, set any product keys if required and choose what type of activation you need.
For “General” provide your Company name and a description for this config file. I tend to use a brief list of the config choices for future reference.
Under “Application preferences” you can set any specific preferences that you require.
When you are happy with your config file, click “Export” and you will be prompted to choose the “Default File Format”. I generally choose the “Office Open XML formats”.
Finally, accept the terms in the license agreement, enter a file name and download the file.

Downloading the Office installation files

First download and extract the Office Deploy Tool (ODT) from Microsoft to a new folder. The included example XML files can be deleted.
Put your XML config file in the same folder as the Office Deploy Tool.
Make a copy of your XML config file and edit one of them.
Edit the “SourcePath” near the top of the file to point to a location on your local drive, for example: SourcePath="C:\Users\sysadmin\Downloads\ODT" and then save it.
Open a command prompt and change directory to the folder that contains the Office Deploy Tool and your config XML file.
Run the following command to download the Office files: setup.exe /download [your-edited-config.xml]
A new folder called “Office” will be created and the installation files will be stored there.

Importing the Office installation files into MDT

Copy the entire folder containing the Office Deploy Tool, your config files and the Office folder to your MDT Applications folder.
Rename the folder so it matches what you entered for the Source path when you created the config file on the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center website.
Go to the MDT Deployment Workbench and open “Applications”.
Right-click on “Applications” and click “New Application”.
Choose “Application without source files or elsewhere on the network” and click Next.
Enter an Application name and click Next.
For the “Command line:” enter the following: setup.exe /configure [your-config.xml]
For the “Working directory:” enter the following: .\Applications\[Your-Office-Install] and then click Next.
Finally on the summary screen click Next and then Finish.

After importing the installation files you will now be able to install Office as part of a Windows deployment Task Sequence like any other application.

Group Policy ADMX Files for Office

The ADMX files for Office are backwards compatible with previous versions of Office back to Office 2016 and they can be downloaded here.

Support My Work

If you would like to support me, please check out the link below.

PayPal

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

Prevent Teams From Starting Automatically With No User Login

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 20:13:36 +0000

If you are deploying Microsoft Teams but don’t want it to start on login, or force users to login to disable the auto start then you can do it after installation of Teams simply by editing a file. The file is located in the install location of the Teams installer, by default is it here:

`1`	`%programfiles% (x86)\Teams Installer\setup.json`

The contents of the file should be as follows:

`1`	`{"noAutoStart":true}`

Once this is done, Teams will no longer start up on login of any user by default.

If you would like to support me, please check out the link below.

PayPal

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

Office Update Utility - Update 20.03.01

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 15:19:21 +0000

Office Update Manager for 365/2019

I’ve overhauled Office Update Utility and have improved the reporting. It also includes all the same improvements that the other refactored utilities have.

2020-03-03: Version 20.03.01 ‘Crosshair’

New features:

Refactored code.
Fully backwards compatible.
Added ASCII banner art when run in the console.
Added option to disable the ASCII banner art.
Config report matches design of Image Factory Utility.

Office Update Utility can be downloaded from:

See the full documentation available here.

If you would like to support me, please check out the link below.

PayPal

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

Microsoft Teams, Webhooks and You

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 13:46:58 +0000

If you use Microsoft Teams you may want to be able to send information from external services. There are many apps that can be added to teams to accomplish this but what if you have an internal system or custom script and you want it’s output to be sent to Teams? Well, there’s an app for that too. You can add the Incoming Webhook app to your Teams instance and configure where and who it should deposit information as. You can also create outgoing webhooks that I’ll go through later on in this article. Before we get started you’ll need to be an owner of your Teams instance or have permissions to add apps to it. I also recommend that you use the Teams desktop application as it allows more control for configuration. You can download that from Microsoft here.

Creating An Incoming Webhook for Microsoft Teams

In the desktop Teams application, go to Apps in the sidebar on the left.
Type webhook in the Search all text box on the left hand side.
Click on the Incoming Webhook tile, then in the pop up click on the Add to a team button.
Type the channel or team name you wish to add the webhook to in the text box, then click the Set up a connector button.
Wait for the Connectors for “example” channel in “example” team page to popup.
Now, type a name in the text box for the webhook to be identify by, and optionally give it an image.
Click on Create and until the webhook URL is presented to you.
Take a copy of the URL for use later on in whatever service you wish to link to Teams.
Click Done and you will return to the connectors page.
You can do this multiple times and create multiple webhooks for different services and different channels.

Managing All Incoming Webhooks for Microsoft Teams

In the desktop Teams application, go to the General channel, and click the ellipse.
Then select the Connectors option.
The Connectors for “General” channel in “example” team page will open.
Go to the Configured section under MANAGE.
You should see the Incoming Webhook app here. Under the Configure button click the (number) configured text.
You will see the webhooks that have been added to the Teams instance.
By clicking on the Manage button next to each webhook, you can change the name, image, or remove it. You can also access the incoming webhook URL here.

Removing All Incoming Webhooks for Microsoft Teams

In the desktop Teams application, go to the Team name, and click the ellipse.
Go to Manage Team.
Click on the Apps tab.
Find the Incoming Webhook app in the list of apps.
Click the Trash/Garbage/Rubbish can/bin icon on the far right of the Incoming Webhook.
You will be asked if you wish to Uninstall the Incoming Webhook app. Click the Uninstall button.
The Incoming Webhook app will be uninstalled from your Teams instance.

Creating An Outgoing Webhook for Microsoft Teams

In the desktop Teams application, go to the Team name, and click the ellipse.
Go to Manage Team.
Click on the Apps tab.
In the very bottom right hand corner of the page, click the text Create an outgoing webhook.
In the Create an outgoing webhook popup, you can enter the Name, Callback URL, Description and Profile picture of the webhook. Click Create.
Now you will receive the Security token with which the webhook can securely communicate with Teams.
The Outgoing Webhook will be displayed on the Apps tab of the Teams manage page. Here you can click it to edit it’s information, but you will not be able to see the security token. If you lose it, you must recreate the outgoing webhook.

Removing An Outgoing Webhook for Microsoft Teams

In the desktop Teams application, go to the Team name, and click the ellipse.
Go to Manage Team.
Click on the Apps tab.
Find the name of the outgoing webhook in the list of apps. It will have (Outgoing Webhook) next to the name.
Click the Trash/Garbage/Rubbish can/bin icon on the far right of the Outgoing Webhook in the apps list.
You will be asked if you wish to Uninstall the outgoing webhook. Click the Uninstall button.
The Outgoing Webhook will be uninstalled from your Teams instance.

I’ve found webhooks for Teams to be extremely useful. I’ve recently updated my Network Device Status Monitor utility to support Teams as an output option. You can find out more about that here.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

-Mike

Office Update Utility

Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:00:47 +0000

Microsoft Office Update Manager

Office Update Utility is available from:

Please consider supporting my work:

Support with a one-time donation using PayPal.

Please report any problems via the ‘issues’ tab on GitHub.

Thanks
-Mike

Features and Requirements

This utility will check for and download update files for Microsoft Office.
It can also remove old update files.
This utility requires the Office Deployment Tool a free download available here.
This utility requires at least PowerShell 5.0.
This utility has been tested on Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2016.
The update log can be sent via email and/or webhook.

Folder Structure

This utility requires a specific folder structure in order to operate, it expects the Office Deployment Tool and the configuration xml file to be in the same folder. Additionally, the source path of the Office installation files in the configuration xml file should be set to the same location. For example:

Office Deployment Tool location: \\server\share\Office-365-x64\setup.exe
Configuration xml file location: \\server\share\Office-365-x64\config-2019-x64.xml
Source path in the configuration xml file: \\server\share\Office-365-x64

This configuration will result in the Office update files being downloaded and stored in: \\server\share\Office-2019-x64\Office\Data

Generating A Password File For SMTP Authentication

The password used for SMTP server authentication must be in an encrypted text file. To generate the password file, run the following command in PowerShell on the computer and logged in with the user that will be running the utility. When you run the command, you will be prompted for a username and password. Enter the username and password you want to use to authenticate to your SMTP server.

Please note: This is only required if you need to authenticate to the SMTP server when send the log via e-mail.

1
2

$creds = Get-Credential
$creds.Password | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Set-Content c:\scripts\ps-script-pwd.txt

After running the commands, you will have a text file containing the encrypted password. When configuring the -Pwd switch enter the path and file name of this file.

Configuration

Here’s a list of all the command line switches and example configurations.

Command Line Switch	Description	Example
-Office	The folder containing the Office Deployment Tool (ODT).	[path]
-Config	The name of the configuration xml file for the Office ODT. It must be located in the same folder as the ODT.	[file name.xml]
-Days	The number of days that you wish to keep old update files for. If you do not configure this option, no old files will be removed.	[number]
-L	The path to output the log file to.	[path]
-LogRotate	Remove logs produced by the utility older than X days	[number]
-NoBanner	Use this option to hide the ASCII art title in the console.	N/A
-Help	Display usage information. No arguments also displays help.	N/A
-Webhook	The txt file containing the URI for a webhook to send the log file to.	[path]webhook.txt
-Subject	Specify a subject line. If you leave this blank the default subject will be used	“'[Server: Notification]'”
-SendTo	The e-mail address the log should be sent to. For multiple address, separate with a comma.	[example@contoso.com]
-From	The e-mail address the log should be sent from.	[example@contoso.com]
-Smtp	The DNS name or IP address of the SMTP server.	[smtp server address]
-Port	The Port that should be used for the SMTP server. If none is specified then the default of 25 will be used.	[port number]
-User	The user account to authenticate to the SMTP server.	[example@contoso.com]
-Pwd	The txt file containing the encrypted password for SMTP authentication.	[path]ps-script-pwd.txt
-UseSsl	Configures the utility to connect to the SMTP server using SSL.	N/A

Example

`1`	`[path\]Office-Update.ps1 -Office [path\] -Config [file name.xml] -Days [number]`

This will update the office installation files in the specified directory, and delete update files older than X days

Change Log

2023-04-28: Version 23.04.28

Minor improvement to update checker. If the internet is not reachable it silently errors out.

2023-02-07: Version 23.02.07

Added script update checker - shows if an update is available in the log and console.
Added webhook option to send log file to.
Removed SMTP authentication details from the ‘Config’ report. Now it just shows as ‘configured’ if SMTP user is configured. To be clear: no passwords were ever shown or stored in plain text.

2022-07-31: Version 22.07.30

Changed how the removal of old files works. Old versions will be removed regardless, -Days option has been removed.

2022-06-22: Version 22.06.22

Fixed an issue where If -L [path] not configured then a non fatal error would occur as no log path was specified for the log to be output to.

2022-06-14: Version 22.05.25

Added new feature: log can now be emailed to multiple addresses.
Added checks and balances to help with configuration as I’m very aware that the initial configuration can be troublesome. Running the utility manually is a lot more friendly and step-by-step now.
Added -Help to give usage instructions in the terminal. Running the script with no options will also trigger the -help switch.
Cleaned user entered paths so that trailing slashes no longer break things or have otherwise unintended results.
Added -LogRotate [days] to removed old logs created by the utility.
Streamlined config report so non configured options are not shown.
Added donation link to the ASCII banner.
Cleaned up code, removed unneeded log noise.

2022-05-25: Version 22.05.25

Added -Help to give usage instructions in the terminal. Also running the script with no options will also trigger the -help switch.
Streamlined config report so non configured options are not shown.
Added a -LogRotate option to delete logs older than X number of days.

2021-12-06: Version 21.12.06

Fixed problem with Hostname not displaying.

2021-12-04: Version 21.12.04

Configured logs path now is created, if it does not exist.
Added OS version info.
Added an option to specify the Port for SMTP communication.

2020-03-03: Version 2020.03.01 ‘Crosshair’

New features:

Refactored code.
Fully backwards compatible.
Added ASCII banner art when run in the console.
Added option to disable the ASCII banner art.
Config report matches design of Image Factory Utility.

2019-09-04 v1.1

Added custom subject line for e-mail.

2019-06-16 v1.0

Initial release.