Microsoft VPP Applications slow to install

[kkirshman]

Has anyone noticed issues with the Microsoft VPP applications (ie: Outlook) taking a long time to finish installing using Self Service? After clicking "Install", the application will download and complete but not show up in the /Applications folder for 3 or 4 minutes later. This is causing the Self Service button to display "Install" instead of "Open". Then the user clicks install multiple times causing failed install error in Self Service. Jamf is showing it failed because of multiple requests to install. The application does eventually show up after a few minutes.

[AJPinto]

For Microsoft Apps. I cannot stress enough. Get away from the App Store for deployment. Move over to getting the apps from Microsofts repo, and configuring Microsoft Auto Updater. Deploy with a traditional policy and configuration profile for MAU and update things every 6 months or so. You will see a lot of your issues go away with Office. The entire Appstore VPP workflow is very convoluted, especially for anything over a few megabytes. 

https://macadmins.software

As far as what you are seeing. 

Outlook is about 1gb. That will take a few minutes to download. Once it downloads the xip file needs to be uncompressed and moved in to its final location. Uncompressed Outlook is 2.3GB, this will take several minutes.

Until everything is done JAMF has a spinning circle, this circle just represents something is working its not a progress bar of any kind. If a user navigates away from SS, the spinning wheel will stop but the MDM and API stuff on the backend is still running. If a user clicks install again it will trigger a new set of MDM commands to install Outlook. Apple will see these a duplicate commands and fail them out, which will cause JAMF to yield a error. Even though the duplicate commands "fail" (really they are rejected), the original MDM command is still doing its thing. 

TL;DR:

For App Store apps tell users to click the button once, and not again. - Or - Set the Apps up to install automatically so users dont have a button to click.  

[kkirshman]

Thank you for the recommendation and the reason for the delay behavior! I will start to test migrating Microsoft App Store apps to stand alone (repo) apps. Would you recommend pushing the MAU config file first, then removing the App Store apps by deleting the .app file and deploying the the repo version via policy? Or should I use something like Office-Reset https://office-reset.com/macadmins/ to remove the MS Office apps? Thanks again!

[AJPinto]

Office reset wont help here. The office apps just need the correct Application ID, the Application ID from Office apps from App Store and Microsoft are different. MAU uses those Application ID's to know what it manages, which is why you need to reinstall (or just push an upgrade) as that will change the Application ID.

MAU will install with the Office apps in the packages Microsoft gives you. I recommend having the configuration in place first. That way there is minimal user interaction as things install. You can install the config profile as far ahead as you want.

Here are some links that may help.

Update Microsoft applications for Mac by using msupdate - Deploy Office | Microsoft Learn

Microsoft now provides curated deferral channels for AutoUpdate - Kevin M. Cox (kevinmcox.com)

Microsoft Office Updates - Managing Microsoft Office Using Jamf Pro | Jamf

[kkirshman]

Thanks! I'll review the links you provided. I'm finding that simply updating Outlook App Store App with the repo version via policy is not working. Applications stays listed as "App Store = Yes" in the Jamf Computer > Application payload. If I delete "Microsoft Outlook.app" from the Applications folder, run the policy to install the Outlook repo version, it does update correctly. Jamf Computer > Application payload updates to "App Store = No" and Outlook has the option to "Check for updates" using MAU.