This week is sort of a follow-up on the earlier post about new Microsoft Intune Suite add-on capabilities. That time it was around the early capabilities, like Endpoint Privilege Management, the first glimpses of Advanced Analytics, and Microsoft Tunnel for MAM. This time it’s about Enterprise App Management. Enterprise App Management provides organizations with an applications catalog that contains apps that are prepared by Microsoft. Those apps are all Win32 apps that are wrapped and hosted by Microsoft. That can further simplify management and makes sure that the lifecycle of apps is getting better under control. That means more structural updates of apps, which makes sure that the environment gets more secure. This post will start with a further introduction about Enterprise App Management, followed with the steps to add apps from the Enterprise App Catalog. This post will end with the update behavior of apps from the Enterprise App Catalog.
Note: At the moment of writing the size of the Enterprise App Catalog is still limited, but will definitely grow over time.
Enterprise App Management is mainly an IT feature, as the end-user should not notice anything about it. It helps IT administrators with streamlining app management and getting control of the app management process. Besides that, it helps IT administrators with staying current with updates, by providing the ability to easily create apps for newer versions. Together, that provides IT with more control over the app lifecycle. More control over the security of apps.
The Enterprise App Catalog contains the Win32 apps that are prepared and hosted by Microsoft. Microsoft will basically wrap the installation files (EXE, or MSI) of those apps and create everything that is required to add the app as a Win32 app into Microsoft Intune. Besides that, when adding an app from the Enterprise App Catalog to Microsoft Intune, it will be added with a whole lot of pre-filled installation details. That includes the install and uninstall commands, the installation behavior, the return codes, and more. Besides that, also detection rules and requirements will be pre-filled. All of that will make sure that the process of adding apps to Microsoft Intune gets hugely simplified. A lot less for IT to test and figure out.
All of the pre-filled information of the apps from the Enterprise App Catalog, can be adjusted by the IT administrator when adding the app to Microsoft Intune. So, when for example a specific installation property is required that can be simply added to the installation command line. Of course the recommendation is to use the pre-filled information, as that has been tested. As these apps are added as Win32 apps, the deployment will be handled by the Intune Management Extension. Just like any other Win32 app. After adding the apps to Microsoft Intune, the assignments and supersedence relationships can be created.
When looking at adding an app from the Enterprise App Catalog to Microsoft Intune, the process is actually pretty straight forward. The following 9 steps will walk through the process of adding Mozilla Firefox as an example app from the catalog.
Note: At the moment of writing the pre-filled information does not contain the icon of the app.
Note: Unlike normal Win32 apps, for Enterprise App Catalog apps Allow available uninstall is by default set to Yes.
Note: Keep in mind that Enterprise App Management only supports 64-bit versions of Windows.
After adding the Win32 app from the Enterprise App Catalog to Microsoft Intune, it can be assigned like any other Win32 app. Besides that, the early articles about Enterprise App Management show that there will be a report that shows updates for apps that are added from the Enterprise App Catalog. That will provide a clear overview when there are new versions available. That is, however, not the same as updating the app on the client device. When possible, the apps from the Enterprise App Catalog are (configured to be) self-updating. So, when an update is available for the client device, it will automatically update. Below in Figure 7, is an example of Mozilla Firefox that is a self-updating app.
When a new version is available via the Enterprise App Catalog, that new version can be added to Microsoft Intune. And supersedence relations can be used for the deployment of those new versions. Besides that, apps that are coming from the Enterprise App Catalog will always check for its current version or later, as the detection of the app on the client device (as clearly shown above in Figure 7). That makes sure that new versions from the Enterprise App Catalog work together with the self-updating on the client device.
For more information about the Intune Suite add-on capabilities and Enterprise App Management, refer to the following docs.
