As announced in late August, Microsoft will start automating the installation of the Microsoft 365 Companion Apps to everyone (starting with the Microsoft 365 Insiders) with the Microsoft 365 desktop apps installed on their Windows 11 device starting late October. In this blog post, I show how you, as a Microsoft 365 administrator, can counter this and install the Microsoft 365 Companions apps in a controlled manner with Microsoft Intune.
What are the Microsoft 365 Companion Apps
As Microsoft communicates on its page, Microsoft 365 companions are a suite of apps designed to enhance productivity by using Microsoft Graph and providing quick access to essential features directly from the Windows 11 taskbar.
I won’t go into detail about the Microsoft 365 Companion Apps and their contents; you can find all this information on the Microsoft Learn site here.
Now, if you don’t want these apps installed automatically, you can easily disable this for your tenant.
How to disable the Automatic installation of the Microsoft 365 Companion Apps
Go to the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center | Customization | Device Configuration, then go to Modern Apps settings and choose Microsoft 365 companion apps (preview). Then uncheck Enable automatic installation of Microsoft 365 companion apps (preview) and Save.
We have now disabled automatic installation of the Microsoft 365 Companion Apps for our tenant. But what if you still want to make them available now or have them automatically installed on your managed devices? Then we have Microsoft Intune that can take care of that.
Deploy the Microsoft 365 Companions Apps with Microsoft Intune
Now, if you still want to make the M365 Companions App available to your end users, you can deploy it with Microsoft Intune. In this step, I will show you how to simply make the M365 Companions App available in the Company Portal for your users.
First, you need to download the app here and create a .intunewin file with the Microsoft Win32 Content Prep Tool.
Go to Microsoft Intune admin center | Apps | Windows and choose Create. As the App type, you choose Windows app (Win32) and choose Select.
Select your .intunewin file you created and choose OK.
On the next screen, enter the App information, and select Next.
In the Program screen, enter the following install and uninstall commands:
- Install command: .\m365companionsetup.exe /q
- Uninstall command: powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command “Remove-AppxPackage -Package Microsoft.M365Companions_2.2508.29002.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe”
Leave the other settings as they are for now and select Next.
On the Requirements page, choose the following and leave the rest as is and select Next:
- Check operating system architecture: No. Allow this app to be installed on all systems
- Minimum operating system: Windows 11 23h2
On the Detection rules page set the Rules Format as Manually configure detection rules and choose Add. For the Detection rule settings, choose the ones below and select OK. Then choose Next.
- Rule type: File
- Path: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\
- File or Folder: Microsoft.m365companions_2.2508.29002.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe (I choose a folder, because the app installs 3 seperate apps within this folder)
- Detection method: File or folder exists
- Associated with a 32-bit app on 64-bit clients: No
You can skip through Dependencies and Supersedence by choosing Next, and at the Assignments we will add a user group (I created one for all my M365 licensed users) to the Available for enrolled devices. Assign the app to your group and choose Next.
On the Review + Create page, review everything, and when you are ready to go choose Create.
The M365 Companions App is now created and made available for the assigned users in the Company Portal app on their Windows 11 device.
End-user experience
Log in to your Windows device and open the Company Portal app. You will see that the M365 Companions App is now available.
Choose the M365 Companions App and choose Install.
Wait for the download and installation to complete, and close the screen.
If you go to Start, you’ll see that the three M365 Companion Apps (People, Calendar, and Files) are installed.
That’s it, no automatic install of the M365 Companions App on your users’ devices, but controlled and managed with Microsoft Intune. Hope you found this post interesting, and until the next one!
