How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager

How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager? New Software Center is available in ConfigMgr/SCCM 1511 vNext TP4.

However, by default, this is not enabled. When you install the SCCM/ConfigMgr client, the software center is the same one that you can see in the SCCM 2012 version.

So, how to enable the new Software Center in the next version of SCCM/ConfigMgr 1511? Yes, we will cover the details in this post. Let’s see what the changes are in the new SCCM Software Center.

How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM

The new Software center is still based on silver light. Following is the existing version of SCCM Software Center. The user-based deployment will again go via the Application catalog.

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How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager

How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager?

How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager

New Software Center comes with a new modern look. The Software Center applications page comes with a smart filter, sort, search, and more options.

How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager

 How to enable the newest version of Software Center in SCCM 1511? This option is there in the client settings policy “\Administration\Overview\Client Settings” – default client settings.

Click on Computer Agent and change the device settings option to “use new software center” to YES (as you can see in the following pic). By default, this policy option is set to NO.

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How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager

Once the above client setting policy has been deployed to a device collection, this will automatically replace the old Software Center with a new one.

Once you click on one of the applications which you want to install from the SCCM software center, then it will give you more details about the application. Similar to Install, download size, Restart requirement, etc.  New Software Center has left side driven menu.

Installation status and Installed Software are some of the nice options in the previous version of the SCCM software Center. The installation status shows the details of the installation of the software/application. The application will stay here on this page (InstallationStatus) when installation is failed.

If the installation of the application is successful, then that application will be listed on both the pages Installation status and Installed Software. How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager?

How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager

Another option is the Device Compliance page in the new Software center; this gives an option to check the compliance status of a device only for Conditional Access scenarios. This is very helpful in terms of protecting the corp data. The device should comply with corp policies to access corp resources/data.

New Software Center in SCCM/ConfigMgr 1511 has an options page with loads of interesting options. This is part of empowering the users of their computers. The options are Work Information, Power Management, Computer Maintenance, and Remote Control.

SCCM-ConfigMgr TP4-1511-New Software Center-7
SCCM-ConfigMgr TP4-1511-New Software Center-8
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager
SCCM-ConfigMgr TP4-1511-New Software Center-9
How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager

Resources

SCCM Related Posts Real World Experiences Of SCCM Admins (anoopcnair.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…

6 thoughts on “How to Enable New Software Center in SCCM ConfigMgr Configuration Manager”

  1. I’ve been fighting this issue all night and morning with our recent upgrade to v1511 RTM. I made sure the Client Settings are set properly and all of my clients are still launching the old Software Center from any of the shortcuts available (popup in the system tray and/or start menu). The ONLY way I can make it work is to call the shortcut from C:\Windows\CCM\ClientUX\SCClient.exe directly, but that doesn’t seem like a feasible solution.

    I found another blog (http://www.scconfigmgr.com/2015/12/06/enable-the-new-software-center-in-configmgr-1511/) where the guy said to go to the Client Settings and set this setting to NO, save the settings, go back and change it back to YES, save it again, and upon pulling the policies, the client should then make the change to the new Software Center, but I haven’t had such luck. Even after reinstalling the SCCM client after the policies have been saved and resaved!

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Reply
  2. Never mind. I found another Client Setting that was also defining the policy for “Use new Software Center” and once I changed it back to NO, then back to YES, and my machines ran a policy check, it’s working.

    So it seems there may be a bug with this setting and having it commit. I had to make sure that each Client Setting that is defining the Computer Agent setting needs to be saved twice with the YES setting. Weird.

    Reply
  3. Hey,
    thanks for the tipps.
    Is it possible to change the disgn from the “applications” page from the new “tiles design” to the old list view, like in “installation status”?
    And is it possible to “grey out” the things in the “options” tab for the users, that they cant change something?
    Regards

    Reply

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