SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr

SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr? SCCM CB application creation is the next step after the installation of SCCM CB 1702 installation, SCCM CB AD discovery, and client installation.

Latest Post How To Deploy Zoom Application Using SCCM | ConfigMgr HTMD Blog (anoopcnair.com).

I already covered in the previous posts “Step by Step Video Tutorial of SCCM CB 1702 Baseline version Installation” and “Video Tutorial How to Perform SCCM CB AD Discovery and Install Client“. SCCM CB application creation is the first step in this process.

The second step is SCCM CB Application Deployment, and the third step is the installation of the SCCM CB application on the clients. We will cover all the scenarios in this post. I have already documented all these steps in the video tutorial which has more details about SCCM CB application creation (upload), deployment, and installation.

Application deployment is one of the features many corporate organizations are using to cater to their business requirements. In SCCM CB, we will have the option to create packages and deploy those SCCM packages. Yes, packages are required in some of the scenarios.

Apart from that, the packages are used to deploy old school win32 apps which got migrated to the SCCM CB environment from SCCM 2003/2007/2012. I would recommend taking advantage of SCCM CB applications rather than still using standard packages.

How to create/Upload SCCM Application – SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr

SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr
SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr

SCCM CB application creation is the first step in this process. The application can be created based on several types of installation files. These installation files are ranged from win 32 MSI apps, EXE, and then the wide range of mobile (MDM) apps.

The best-preferred installation type for Windows devices is MSI, and we are going to cover MSI app creation in this post. I have already shown in the video how to create a shared folder to store the application source.

The first point we need to make sure that the SCCM CB application source should be stored in a UNC path (\\ServerShare\Sources\).

If we don’t provide the UNC path as a source location for the MSI app source, you will get an error in the wizard as you can see in the video tutorial.

SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr
SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr

SCCM CB application creation process will create metadata in the console, and it will create the related DB entries. Apart from this, this process will create a bundle of files which this MSI installation file required for the complete installation of the application.

This bundle of files will be delivered to SCCM content stores called DPs. The client will download (if in case the deployment setting is to download the content from DP) and install it. All this process is covered in the video, and we will cover it in the following sessions.

How to Deploy SCCM CB application and Content?

Once the SCCM CB application is created, and the app reference is there in the console then, we can go ahead and deploy the application content (the source files) to the content store servers (Distribution Points). The entire process is explained in the video tutorial above.

We can initiate a distributed content option to start the application source replication process to remote DPs. SCCM CB application content distribution is mandatory before we deploy the application to SCCM client devices or users.

Once the application content is distributed to the DPs then, we can deploy or schedule the application installation to the device collection or user collection. There are a couple of decisions you want to make before the start of the SCCM CB application deployment process.

The first one is to decide whether we should deploy apps to Device collections? If we are deploying it to device collection then, all the users in that device will get the application, and there could be some license implications as well. The second option is to deploy the application to user collection.

From my perspective, this should be the default deployment practice if you don’t have any specific requirements to deploy apps to devices.

SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr
SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr

The other important point in SCCM CB application deployment is the behavior of application installation. We have two options in the application installation behavior. SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr?

The first one is to empower the user experience by making the SCCM app AVAILABLE. In the available scenario, the application will be deployed to the user, and it will sit in the software center until the user initiates the installation from the software center app.

The second option is to deploy the application as REQUIRED and in this scenario, the application will automatically install on the device without any user intervention.

How to Install Application on End-User Device?

Once you deploy the application to the collection as mentioned in the video tutorial above, the SCCM client will check for the new policies at the next scheduled interval.

On the schedule, the SCCM client will download the application source download, and installation will automatically start on the Windows device as you can see in the video tutorial. The installation behavior setting is very important and depending on that behavior the actual app install will kick off.

SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr
SCCM Configuration Manager Application Creation Deployment Installation | ConfigMgr

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…