You can easily deploy and manage Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise using Microsoft 365 apps admin center. There are a lot of useful features which are automatically enabled when you start enrolling the devices in to the Inventory.
There is no manual step apart from just starting the enrollment process. The Onboarding happens in the background without user interaction. If you enroll all devices to Inventory service, you can get the really useful information from the devices.
Inventory page in Microsoft 365 apps admin center provides useful insights into Office state along with information regarding your devices as well. There are certain requirements to view the Inventory of devices:
- Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise or Microsoft 365 Apps for business, Version 2008 or later.
- Windows 10 or Windows 11 supported by Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise or by Microsoft 365 Apps for business.
- Microsoft 365 (or Office 365) for Business Standard, Business Premium, A3, A5, E3, or E5 subscription plan.
- Client devices can reach the following endpoints:
https://login.live.com
https://*.config.office.comhttps://*.config.office.net
Information synced to Inventory service page of Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center:
Office Details:
- Version
- Build
- Update Channel
- Add-ins (you can get more details about Add-ins by clicking on a particular Add-in)
- Macros (Yes/No)
- Release date
- Office Apps
Device Details:
- Device Name
- Architecture (x64 or x86).
- Manufacturer
- Model Family
- Model
- Total RAM
- OS family
- OS Version (for example: 21H2)
- OS build (for example: 10.0.1.19044.1889 (X64))
- Free storage
- Total Storage
User Details:
- Last User name
- Last User Email
Now we have got the idea about the Inventory service and what information it sync’s to the Portal. Let’s just enable it to start the enrollment process.
Enable Inventory Service
To Enable Inventory service from Microsoft 365 apps admin center. Please follow below steps:
- Login on https://config.office.com/ using either Global Administrator, Security Administrator or Office apps Administrator and click on Inventory on the left hand side.
- Click on Get Started to start the enrollment process. (That’s it, there is no other action required).
Devices will start enrolling and populating on the portal. You can click on each device to find out more information.
What happens during Device Enrollment Process
Below are the changes which you can check on the devices to make sure that Device is enrolled and sending the data to the Inventory service of Microsoft 365 apps admin center portal. You do not need to do this step for Enrolling the devices, this is just for admins to verify the changes (or to perform troubleshooting) on the devices for completing this enrollment to Inventory service.
TenantAssociationKey
- Login on the target device.
- Launch any of the Microsoft 365 apps for Enterprise app for example: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Outlook.
Check the TenantAssociationKey at registry location. This is a unique token associated with your Tenant / Organization. This registration will enable devices to sync the data with Microsoft 365 apps admin center portal.
If Office apps usage is stopped for 14 days or more, the tenant association key will be automatically deleted. It will be retreived again next time when user start any of the office application again. If you are troubleshooting device enrollment into inventory service, make sure that this key is populated in the registry at below location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\cloud\office\16.0\Common\officesvcmanager
If you do not find TenantAssociationKey at this registry location. Then you can try to sign out of Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel or any other Microsoft Office app and Sign in again using your organization email address.
Office Serviceability Manager Scheduled task
This schedule task is created on the target device for checkin / enrollment process. This schedule task is configured to call an exe file officesvcmgr.exe with /checkin parameter. This task runs regularly on the device to make sure the data stays upto date and in Sync with the Microsoft 365 apps admin center.
You can find this task by going to Task Scheduler -> Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Office folder.
From Action Tab you can check the calling exe fine with a parameter /checkin which initiates a device checkin process with the portal.
COM Objects
A Component Object is registered as well with name OfficeSvcManagerAddons with two Objects called InventoryObject.Object 1 and PolicyObject.Object 1.
Inventory from Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center
It takes some time to gather information from all devices, specially if you are having large number of devices being used in your enviornment. You should see devices starts to poupluate from 30 minutes to 1 hour but the list will build gradually as more and more users are using Microsoft Office apps.
If you have enabled this service in a holiday period for example christmas time then it may take a bit longer for devices to check in as the users needs to launch Microsoft Office apps to start the checkin process.
After I waited for couple of days to let the service enroll devices automatically. I checked the Inventory service and can see the device numbers are increasing. You can click on Show all devices to show all the registered devices.
After you click on Show all devices link from Inventory home page, it will show a list of all the devices along with the information synced. You can click on Export to Export Inventory report in a CSV file. As you can see this report is really useful because it provides valuable insights about the device as well as office versions installed on all your devices.
Clicking on a Device shows more insights about the device like Manufacturer, Model, Total RAM, OS Family, OS Version details etc.
Conclusion
In this blog post, we have configured Microsoft 365 apps for enterprise inventory service and also checked the changes enrollment process makes on the devices. Inventory services provides useful insights about your devices and office applications. You can export the data into a report and filter out the information you need. For example, If you want to get a report of all devices with their Feature Update Version, then you can simply export the report from Inventory page and delete all other colums except Device Name and OS Version.