Deploy Word and Powerpoint Default Templates using Intune
Author: Ofir Gavish
Introduction
If you want to deploy or update Word and Powerpoint Templates across your organization using Intune you've come to the right place.
In this post I'm gonna show you how to do that using Intune Platform Scripts and Azure Storage Account static web content
You can use any publicly accessible storage like S3 bucket, Azure Storage account, etc.
I'm using Azure Storage Account static web content for my Cloud Storage needs and will cover creating one in this post.
Create an Azure Storage Account
In the Azure Portal, search for storage account in the top search bar.
click on create:
In the Basics tab, select your Subscription, a Resource Group (or create a new one), give it a name, select a region thats best for you, and configure the other settins like in this screenshot:
Click on Next, keep the defaults in the other tabs and click on Review + create and then on Create.
When the stroage account gets created, click on Go to resource to configure the storage account.
Configure static website on Storage Account
In your storage account page, click on Data Management then on Static website on the left:
Click on Enable and enter the details like in this screenshot:
Then click on Save, after a few seconds this will show up:
Now that you have your Primary endpoint copy it.
Now if you want to use this to host a website, you can put your html (css + js supported as well) files there and access your website, we are going to configure this as a anonymous access public storage so your endpoints can download the templates from the blob storage
We'll need to configure two settings so this will work, one is to enable Allow Blob anonymous access:
Click on Settings then on Configuration and enable the blob anonymous access:
Number two is to change the Anonymous access level on the $web conainter (not needed if you connect and use a custom domain which will not be covered in this post):
I like to use the Storage browser but you can also work with the Containers option under Data storage.
Click on Storage browser on the left, then on Blob containers and you'll see your $web container:
Click on the 3 dots on the right side of the $web folder and choose Change access level:
Select Container and click on Ok:
Now we're ready to add a directory and upload our template files:
Click on your $web container and then on Add Directory:
Give it a name (note that it's case sensitive!), I'll call it "files" for this example and click on Ok:
Click on Upload and select your files:
If you dont upload any file to the directory you created before browsing away from the page it will be removed.
Upload your Word and Powerpoint Templates here
When it's done uploading click on your file, and copy the URL:
Try to paste this URL into a new tab, the file should start downloading
We'll use the URLs of the two files to edit in the PowerShell Script.
Get your script ready!
Download the Script from my Github repo
Open the script in the editor of your choice - personally, I use both PowerShell ISE and Visual Studio Code. I like to mix it up, because why settle for one when you can drown in the chaos of two editors, all while your code slowly unravels and you start questioning if this is the real world... or just a bug in the matrix?
Edit the two lines in the #Variables section, paste the url's of your template files you copied from the storage account before this step.
Intune Portal Time!
Deploy this script as a Platform Script and assign it to the group you want to deploy it to.
Configure the settings like in this screenshot:
Always start deploying new policies and scripts on a few endpoints first, after you verify it works successfuly and as intended then assign it to more devices
Conclusion
By following these steps, you have:
- Created an Azure Storage account static website.
- Made your template files accessible publicly.
- Configured a Platform script on Intune to steamline your Word and PowerPoint Templates deployment and updates.
That's it for this post, just one more thing, in the script I'm using the PowerShell module I created - which you can read about in this post