If you are an IT Admin looking to Automate application packaging for Windows Devices, stay tuned because this article, we are going to be discussing what automation tools are available today. I will also be showing you a demo of a third-party tool called Simeon Cloud which automates application packaging for apps that you push out from Microsoft Intune for one-to-many Microsoft Tenants.
Downsides to Traditional App Packaging
#1 its very time consuming
Traditional app packaging is very time consuming because you have to manually download installation files, package them up for deployment, add them to some tool to perform the deployment in bulk (like an RMM tool or SCCM), and then manually repackage them with every update you need to perform.
#2 App Packaging is complex
When you package apps, you need to specify install and uninstall files, determine if the package will install in user or system context and provide certain detection rules to know that the application install successfully.
#3 App Packaging is redundant
Whether you are just managing app updates in a single business environment or managing app deployments across many environments, app packing is extremely redundant for the manual steps you need to take to deploy or re-deploy in every environment.
These pitfalls are consistent to both Managed Service Providers (MSPS) and Enterprise customers. If you are an MSP its likely you are using your RMM tool to push out applications today and if you are an enterprise customer its likely you are using something like SCCM.
Modern Methods
Many of us have shifted to more modern methods to application packaging. Many MSPs and Enterprise customers use what we call a Windows Package Manger to make application packaging similar. A very popular package manager is Chocolatey. Chocolatey is an open source project that allows you to streamline app packaging from a library of prepacked applications. It allows you to use install cmds to deploy and update common applications within an organization like Google Chrome as an example.
Another more popular package manager these days is straight from Microsoft called Winget. This is built in natively to the Windows OS with later versions and is a similar concept to chocolatey in that there is a library of prepacked apps to choose form to install. This allows you to install and update apps that may not be in the Microsoft Store.
Using Intune to Deploy Apps
If you familiar with the Microsoft product line, you know that you can leverage Microsoft Intune to push out applications to Windows devices. Recently, Microsoft has updated the deployment of Microsoft Store apps with a native integration to Winget which allows you to have a much more friendly users experience where you are just selecting an app from the catalog to deploy and Microsoft with then manage the app updates.
The problem here is that not every app is in the Microsoft App store, take something like Google Chrome for instance. If you are familiar with deploying apps manually in Intune, you know they support Win32 and MSI applications. MSI apps are pretty straightforward for deployment but Win32 apps can get complicated and time consuming as you have to a cmd line tool to convert Win32 apps into what is called an IntuneWIn file. This is basically just a file that contains all the installation files for the app so that intune can push it out to devices.
While you can get creative and use a combination of package managers and IntuneWIN files, to deploy apps to an organization, this is more complex to implement. Additionally, this does not allow you to easily deploy apps across many Microsoft tenants. For MSPs, this means redeploying the same apps over and over again in each customer that you manage. Ideally, we would like to leverage Intune over an RMM tool for app deployment, to take advantage of things like Windows Autopilot where apps are installed as part of the unboxing experience vs an RMM where they are install only after the RMM tool is deployed.
3rd Party Tools
This where a tool like Simeon Cloud comes into play and can provide value. Simeon has a native application builder tool. In Simeon you are able to add Microsoft tenants and create new applications which steps you through downloading an empty IntuneWin File and uploading it to Microsoft Intune in the Endpoint Manager Admin center. From there, all you have to do is upload the installation file and Simeon can package up the app so that it can be deployed to many Microsoft tenants.
Full Demo:
Open Source Projects/Resources
Here are some cool open source projects that use a combination of IntuneWIN files and Winget to deploy apps:
Romanitho/Winget-Install: Powershell scripts for Winget with SCCM/Intune (github.com)
How to: winget & Intune | scloud
Prepare a Win32 app to be uploaded to Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn