It’s been a while since I wrote my last Blog-Post. After the 10 Year Anniversary Workplace Ninja User Group in the Netherlands, some questions came up about the Windows Store for Business (WS4B, WSfB) integration in Intune and what’s next.
Microsoft announces a long time ago that store for Business and Store for Education will no longer be available to use after 2023:
So, there are no more Apps to buy with a multi-license pool and the apps no longer have to be synced from the Private Store in to Intune.
Now you have maybe a Problem in your Intune environment, because of the “Old”-Imported apps?
Basically, the apps themselves are still the same, if they are installed on a device, they will be updated in the backend, as it was before. The only thing you have to take care of is to disconnect the sync from the private store to your Intune Tenant. Next Step is to exchange the “old” Legacy Apps with the new store integration:
- First go to the Store for Business Portal https://businessstore.microsoft.com
- go to Manage
- go to Settings and select Distribute
At the bottom you will your connections that you did in the past to sync the Private Store to Intune:
now you have to deactivate the connection, that it will change the Status to inactive:
At this moment, the sync will stop, and you can go to the Intune Portal: https://intune.azure.com
Go to your apps, and select all apps, then you can use the filter to only display the Apps from the Store:
If you open an existing App, you will see a message that the app is no more synced:
Adding your Microsoft Store for Business and Education apps to the Microsoft Store in Intune – Microsoft Community Hub
Now there are some Important Information’s you have to know and collect:
1. The App was assigned to User or Device. (This influences to Install method of the app)
2. The app has an Info in it about the “Supports device context assignment”
Those Information helps you decide what you have to select, during the Import of the Same App with the New Import mechanism.
Next step is to start Importing the Apps you still need, with the new option to get apps in:
Add Microsoft Store apps to Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn
add an app and select “Microsoft Store App (new)):
The way to Import an App is straight forward, the Only thing you have to take care, is the User or System selection during the Import;
because this can end in a lot of Problems, because If you have the App Installed in the Past on a user basis and now you add it as System based, the App can end in unusable state.
The second Problem is, you can only select the User or System during the Import, afterwards a change is not Possible:
There is a great Post about to fix things on those apps that are User and system messed up installations from Ben Ben Whitmore | MVP (@byteben) / Twitter and Bryan Bryan Dam (@bdam555) / Twitter:
MEM/Reset-Appx.ps1 at main · byteben/MEM · GitHub
Next step is to delete the old app from Intune:
go to the All-Apps Blade and find the app, at the verry end at the three dots, select delete:
This is it.
There are more points to have a look on, especially the Policy assignment, with GPO or CSP, if you set the Policy to not connect the Store, the download and update of the existing apps will stop working, also you installed the apps with Winget (PowerShell).
Choose only the Policy to hide the Store app, then the Display (if a user opens it) will be empty, but the functionality will still work.
Hope this helps and makes your day a little easier and gives you time for a Beer 😉
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