Deploying Microsoft apps to Intune can be done either two ways:

Adding Windows Store apps through ‘Client Apps’ Sync your apps from the Microsoft Store for Business

The first option can be really cumbersome because you have to configure all the app data manually (Name, Description, URL to store, picture…). The easiest way in my eyes is to link the Microsoft Store for Business to your Intune configuration.

Link Intune to Microsoft Store for business

Linking the Microsoft Store for Business to Intune in itself is pretty easy but you gotta know where the settings are located.Navigate to your favorite URL https://devicemanagement.microsoft.com (which is bookmarked offoucrse). Click ‘Client Apps’ and choose ‘Microsoft Store for Business near the bottom. You will now navigate to the Microsoft Store for Business (MSfB) setup screen within Intune. The first step is to ‘Enable’ it and open the Store by clicking the link.

Next up, sign-in with your Azure AD credentials.

Now we have to link the store to Intune. Click ‘Manage’ at the top navigation bar. Because this is your first time accessing the store, you will have to agree to share you data.

Click Accept and then click Manage again. Afterwards choose ‘Distribute’ and click ‘Activate’ next to Microsoft Intune near the bottom of the screen. With this simple click we have linked the Microsoft Store for Business and Intune with eachother.

Adding your apps

After this we can start adding our apps.

Click the search bar at the top of the screen and search for the app you want to add. In this example, we will deploy the Company Portal app.

Click on the app you want to deploy.

In the next screen, click ‘Get the app’.

Accept the Services Agreement before you can add the app.

After accepting the agreement, the app will have been added successfully.

Deploy the app through Intune

The app has now been added to the Microsoft Store for Business. Go back to Intune and click ‘Save’. After clicking Save, the Sync button will turn blue. Click the Sync button to sync your MSfB apps to Intune.

Wait a few minutes, then go back to Apps, the app will now added be in the list.

Now we can assign the app to the group we want. We can choose the app to be required, this will automatically install it to all users/devices it is assigned to. Or we can make it available. This will display the app in the Company Portal (of course we can’t do this in our scenario, because we are deploying the company portal app). I will deploy the app to all devices, because I find it very important all users have access to it.

Click OK, OK, Save to deploy the apps to your computers.

PS: If you want to make an app available, remember this can only be done when you assign it to a group of users.

Configuring collections in MSfB

The Microsoft Store for Business also has the ability to publish apps to users. It’s not possible to push apps this way, but you can feature apps in the Store on the users computers.We can configure which apps we want to publish in the store.

Go back to our app in the Microsoft Store for Business, click the three ellipses and choose ‘Manage’.

In the ‘Private Store availability’ tab, we can choose the availability of our app. We can choose to let nobody see it, publish it to everyone or publish it to a groups.

You can also group apps into collections. This will have no affect for the apps you deploy through Intune, but will change the look of your private Microsoft Store for Business.

Navigate to your private store by clicking on it’s name. Now you can click the 3 ellipses next and choose ‘Edit Collection’ to configure you default collection.

Here you can add or remove apps from a collection.

Removing apps

Removing apps from the Microsoft Store for Business can be a bit tricky and isn’t straightforward. Check out this blog how this can be done.