It has been a while since I’ve last posted on here since being made redundant, but I made the most of it with a ten day “redundancy ride”, bikepacking my way through the beautiful South Island of New Zealand. To show a few photos from the trip:
However, I’m pleased to land at Cyclone Computer Company as a Technology Strategist and will be working with education and commercial customers moving forward. I’ll update more on this in due course, but I wanted to share this short video from the amazing Scott Breen because he has explained in very simple terms how to migrate from the soon to be deprecated Microsoft Store for Education (or business) to the new Microsoft Store app type in Intune.
Deprecation of the Microsoft Store for Education
Signalled as far back as July 2021 in this blog post, the key dates to understand are imminent:
- 30th April 2023 (no more syncs)
- 15th June 2023 (no more deployments)
Therefore, it’s critical to make this transition away from the Store for Education to the new store app deployment methodology with Intune.
If you’re deploying the ever popular Minecraft: Education app through Intune then you’ll need to make this change immediately, and there is actually some dedicated documentation to help you with this here:
Intune Microsoft Store app changes – Minecraft Education
The process is simple – only 3 steps
As per Scott’s video, there are only three steps required:
- Create a new Microsoft Store app
- Copy Group Assignments
- Remove Assignments from the old app and/or delete the old app
Private Store is now Company Portal
Many customers were using the “Private Store” functionality in the Microsoft Store to provide a curated list of apps that a user could optionally download if they wished.
This functionality is now only available to end users via the free cross-platform Intune Company Portal app. In the image below, the old Private Store is minimized on the left and the new Company Portal is on the right:
Final Thoughts
I’m a big believer in modern management and Intune is at the heart of this from a Microsoft perspective. As the app story evolves it’s critical to keep up with these changes and fortunately in this instance, the change from the deprecated Store for Education to the new Microsoft Store app type in Intune is pretty painless.
Do make sure you move quickly to avoid being impacted by the cut off date.
