Announced Changes to Office and Windows servicing and support – Part 3

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For the final post in this series I'll swing back to the topic of MSI versus Click-to-Run (C2R) which is where I've seen the majority of questions focused, so take a look at the first post where I covered this quickly, today I will highlight some resources to help bridge the knowledge gap for those who haven't spent time with C2R yet.

Before I begin, one of the important things to note is that the MSI version of Office has really only been available via volume licensing channels since the Office 2013 release. Anybody who has been purchasing consumer versions of Office, subscribing to a consumer or commercial version of Office 365, or using the version of Office that was preinstalled by their OEM has been using C2R. If you go in to File -> Account in an Office application you can easily tell if you have a C2R install.

The image above shows that this is a subscription, that it's Office 365 ProPlus, and finally that it's Click-to-Run.

Questions around the activation and deployment of Office 2019 inside a corporate environment in ways that are more similar to how you may approach Office 2016 and Office 2013 MSI installs today are best answered by some of the changes with Visio and Project C2R and volume licensing. To illustrate this I'll use the Office Customization Tool (Preview).

Here you can see that Visio 2016 and Project 2016 volume licensing variants are available, but not Office 2016 VL variants. Hopefully when Office 2019 goes in to public preview this tool gets updated quickly so you can start testing this out. Because the initial posts around Office 2019 haven't specifically mentioned Visio and Project, many people have been curious about their status, so hopefully this addresses any concerns and shows that they are ahead of the game.

I've also included this screenshot to help clarify KMS or MAK activation to help meet your activation and internet connectivity requirements. That doesn't completely address connectivity and bandwidth concerns, so let's look at one more thing.

To finish up today's post, here you can see that I've highlighted the ability to configure the installation source, and potentially a different update source, which helps to set up staged deployments if needed. If you are already on board with Configuration Manager branches, you've got different ways of addressing this, so I wouldn't worry about looking here, and instead look at how Configuration Manager handles Office ProPlus today.