How to Add Apps to Business Store and Install Intune Company Portal without Using MS Account? How to Add Apps to Business Store and Install Intune Company Portal without Using MS Account?
When a Windows 10 device is AAD + MDM enrolled, as explained in the following blog here, users always face an odd situation where they need to use their personal Microsoft account to install applications from the Windows store.
If it’s a company-owned device, users won’t prefer to log in to Windows Store using a personal account. When your MDM is Intune, then Intune company portal is one of the applications which all cooperate-owned devices should have.
How to Add Apps to Business Store and Install Intune Company Portal
Using Microsoft Store for Business can remove the dependency of using a personal account to log in to the Windows store. Signup to Microsoft Store for Business from here and start using it.
There are two types of apps that you can add to a private store (Microsoft Store for Business). One is the applications already published in Windows Store (this option is explained in this post), and the other option is to add LOB apps to the private store.
From the Microsoft Store for Business, select the Manage button and click on Inventory to find out already published apps. There is an option to add New LOB apps to Microsoft Store for Business, as you can see in the screen capture below (I’ve not tested this).
Search the Windows Store and select the application you want to deploy to Microsoft Store for Business (private store). In this scenario, I selected the Word Mobile application. Click on the Get the App button to add this application to Microsoft Store for Business.
Once you click on Get the App option as mentioned in the above tab, then you will get distribution options. More details about distribution are explained in the next step. Click OK on the message Started adding the app to your private store.
As mentioned in the above step, the Windows store application can be distributed to:-
- Add to your private store where all people in your organization can find and install it.
- Assign to people (via email ID)
- Distribute it later
I selected the first option; this will start the distribution of the Word Mobile application to the organization’s private store.
The Inventory tab inside Microsoft Store for Business will tell you which applications are already published in the Business store. In my case, I had already published Intune Company Portal and Outlook applications.
So you can see two applications already in the private store (Already in the private store means these applications are already present in the store for business). One application Word Mobile gives a status like “Add in Progress“.
Add in progress means the process is initiated in the background to add an application to your Microsoft Store for Business. In my experience, it took more than 12 hours to get an application published in the Microsoft Store for Business.
Once the application is added to the Microsoft Store for business, you can log in to Azure AD + MDM auto-enrolled Windows 10 device and launch Windows Store to install private store apps.
No need to log in with Microsoft ID rather, you can use corporate credentials (SSO) to log in to the Windows store. As you can see in the following screen capture, when you want to install an application that is not published in a private store, then you need to log in with Microsoft credentials.
Default Directory is the name of your private store (Microsoft store for business). Default Directory (you can give custom names) is the tab you can view and install the applications from your private store. I used the default directory in Azure AD, which is why the name of this tab came as Default Directory.
Successfully installed Company portal application from Private Store named Default Directory.
Resources
SCCM Related Posts Real World Experiences Of SCCM Admins (anoopcnair.com)
SCCM Video Tutorials For IT Pros – HTMD Blog #2 (howtomanagedevices.com)
Author
Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…