Extension Attribute Perpetual License LTSC Office 2024

@tcandela You might want to try and determine the difference between the 2021 and 2024 LTSC and update the script yourself since @pbowden who wrote that script is apparently on extended medical leave from MS and has been offline for about a year.

@tcandela I can help update the script for you but I will need your help in testing the same. Feel free to dm me on jamf nation or slack @Samstar777 and we can work together on this.

I'm also VERY interested in this. The magic is in interpreting /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist but the "data" blocks are not encoded in any way I could easily decode (not that I tried too hard, i.e. it's not straightforward base64 encoded). Happy to provide any info I can.

@Samstar777 @JasonEgg  let me know when you update the EA script and I'll use it and run a recon to see if my test mac changes from 2021 license to 2024

@tcandela and @JasonEgg Could anyone of you can provide me with "com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist" file. This will help me find the unique identifier to write the logic to detect license information.

I sent some details to @Samstar777 

I am going to try to get more examples and find patterns on my own as well

@JasonEgg @Samstar777  let me know if you need anything to help with trying to figure this out 

I added:

if /usr/bin/grep -q "Bozo+MzVxzFzbIo+hhzTl41DwAFJEitHSg5IiCEeuI" "$PERPETUALLICENSE"; then
/bin/echo "Office 2024 Volume License"
return
fi

to our Office License extension attribute. After an inventory update, my test Mac reported having a Office 2024 Volume License instead of the perpetual license. Won't help with reporting the stacked licenses, but it's a start.

@tcandela @JasonEgg Could you please test this updated Extension Attribute for Office License and let me know if it helps - Github

@RobbEFX Thanks for your suggestion.

@Samstar777 @JasonEgg I'll give the updated EA a test and let you know what happens.

Cursory testing reveals it is only accurate for new deployments, that is, fresh installations without a previously existing license file. For instances where license was "updated" from 2021 to 2024, the EA still reports 2021 even after 2024 license is applied. I believe this is is the "stacked" scenario that @RobbEFX is referring to.

The old pbowden script seemed to identify "stacked" instances by the length of the plist file, but perhaps this is no longer accurate?

I'm going to do some more testing

@JasonEgg Thanks for your feedback, To Summarise the script works as expected on newly deployed device but does not work on existing office which got upgraded from Office 2021 to Office 2024. let me read the entire script and stacked logic to enhance the script. Thanks for the feedback and i believe together we can do it :)

@Samstar777 @JasonEgg @RobbEFX @sdagley  I'll see what I can also find out from looking at the original script. Anyone with programming experience It's pretty easy to follow what's happening. 

Looks like 3 functions assigning 3 variables and from there basically a bunch of IFs to get the EA value.

@JasonEgg I have given you a string in slack, could you run that and get me the output of the same.

@JasonEgg @Samstar777  how is everything going with the EA for LTSC Office 2024

Unfortunately no progress: the new version of the EA will identify only fresh installs of 2024, not the "stacked" instances. I've stared at the license plist files of about 5 devices and can't find a consistent rule to correctly identify 2024 in all cases.

that’s no problem at this point.  it looks like the updated EA in github doesn’t have any documentation on new dates on when recent changed were made.  Last change shows April 7, 2021.

so the only change/difference from the original EA script is that 1 if statement line 85 thru 88 ?

I used the exact same grep pattern as @JasonEgg in my script as well. I did not think to test the difference between fresh and upgrades. 

I am also using an additional smart group:

'Packages Installed By Casper' has 'Microsoft_Office_LTSC_2024_VL_Serializer.pkg'

However, I recognize that the license data can be overwritten, that is extremely unlikely in our environment.