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PATCHED Office 2013 SP1 Pro X86 X64 Plus ACTIVATOR: The Best Way to Get the Most Out of Your Office



Microsoft Office is an office suite for the desktop applications. Office was first announced by Bill Gates in 1988 which included Word, PowerPoint and Excel. As time passed Office applications has grown significantly. The importance of Office can be judged by the fact the now a days over 1 billion users are using Office applications for their official and educational needs. Office 2013 is the latest version that has been introduced by Microsoft after Office 2010. Office 2013 Professional has been designed in such a way that now you can work faster and smarter. It has some great time saving features and has a very clean interface for all its applications. With office 2013 now you can save your work online in OneDrive so that you can access your documents at any time at any place. Office 2010 was the previous version of Office.


Office 2013 is the first touch-enabled office release from Microsoft to be accompanied by Windows 8. Now save documents on Skydrive for free due to the deep integration of Office 2013 with Microsoft cloud services.




PATCHED Office 2013 SP1 Pro X86 X64 Plus ACTIVATOR




Microsoft Office 2013 offers all the Office programs that you'll find on the Microsoft office 2010 suite. The program contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook, and all of them get major upgrades with this version of office. The only other more updated version of these programs can be found is Microsoft Office 2016. To activate Microsoft Office 2013, you will need the Microsoft office 2013 activation key, also known as the Product key.


The following are the latest MS Office Keys that we could find. These product keys are fully functional although they are on a first come first served basis. Choose one of them to activate your office 2013;


This new form of subscription also gives you cloud storage space of up to 1TB along with all the programs included in the Microsoft Office 2013 suite. You can download the suite from the Microsoft office website and subsequent updates of the program can also be downloaded on the website.


If you looking on the internet for a Microsoft activation for office 2013 product key free full working so, you come to the right place now, a day shares with your product keys for Microsoft office 2013 to be updated in Jan 2023 full working keys is valid for next year to expired all keys.


You must, first of all, subscribe to or buy Microsoft Office 2013 if you are looking for the Microsoft Office 2013 Product Key to be activated. MS Office 2013 is a newly updated Microsoft office version and Microsoft 2010 successor and Microsoft 2016 predecessor. Compared to previous versions, the updated Microsoft Office 2013 version has new and advanced features. Microsoft office 2013 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDf, Publish brochure, envelopes, flyer, etc. Includes the following suites. In addition to a Vision file viewer, you can just play with the documents. You all have to have an activation key for Microsoft Office 2013.


How To Deploy Microsoft Office 2013 Using SCCM 2012 R2 In this post we will see how to deploy Microsoft Office 2013 using SCCM 2012 R2. If you are planning to deploy Microsoft Office 2010 using SCCM 2012 then you can click on this link. In this post we will be deploying Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 64 bit edition and the copy of office that I have is an MSDN copy. We know that the OCT (Office Customization Tool) is available only with volume licensed versions of Windows Installer-based Office 2013, Office 2010, and the 2007 Office system. To determine whether an Office 2013 installation is a volume licensed version, check the Office 2013 installation disk to see whether it contains a folder named Admin. If the Admin folder exists, the disk is a volume license edition. If the Admin folder does not exist, the disk is a retail edition. As there is no admin folder with MSDN copy we will first download Office Customization Tool 2013 from here. We are basically looking for an unattended setup of Microsoft Office 2013 and this can be achieved only when you customize the installation using office customization tool. You can refer to SCCM 2012 R2 step by step guide here.


Once you download the OCT 2013 setup file you need to install the software. Run the OCT 2013 executable file and extract the files to a folder inside Office installation files. In the below screenshot I have manually created the Admin folder and copied the OCT 2013 setup file inside it. The files are extracted to Admin folder, you can also skip creating a folder manually because the OCT 2013 setup file creates a folder named Admin by itself and extracts the files in it. The office 2013 setup files are stored on a drive in SCCM server in a folder named Office 2013.


Click on Licensing and user interface, choose the option Use KMS client key if you have KMS server in your organization for activating office 2013 suite, else choose Enter another product key and enter the office 2013 key. Click on I accept the terms in the license agreement. Select the Display level as Basic, check the box for Suppress modal and No cancel.


Click on Content tab, set the Content location to Office 2013 folder ( or a folder where Office 2013 installation files are present, remove proplusr.ww after Office 2013 ). Click on Apply.


HI, a great site by the way. by design and content. i would like to know that, if I want to upgrade from office 2007 to office 2013 via sccm how would i do that ? i am guessing the same tutorial as above with some extra modification of removing existing office version ??


In your post what do we do with the custom_setting we created where do we add this to the package maybe i missed something????do we add the custom setting inside the application office 2013 folder and then package it?


So this is a blogpost based upon a session I had at NIC conference, where I spoke about how to optimize the delivery of Office365 in a VDI\/RSDH enviroment. There are multiple stuff we need to think \/ worry about. Might seem a bit negative, but that is not the idea just being realistic So this blogpost will cover the following subjects Federation and sync Installing and managing updates Optimizing Office ProPlus for VDI\/RDS Office ProPlus optimal delivery Shared Computer Support Skype for Buisness Outlook OneDrive Troubleshooting and general tips for tuning Remote display protocols and when to use when. So what is the main issue with using Terminal Servers and Office365? The Distance\u2026. This is the headline for a blogpost on Citrix blogs about XenApp best pratices So how to fix this when we have our clients on one side, the infrastructure in another and the Office365 in a different region ? Seperated with long miles and still try to deliver the best experience for the end-user, so In some case we need to compromise to be able to deliver the best user experience. Because that should be our end goal Deliver the best user experience User Access First of is, do we need to have federation or just plain password sync in place? Using password sync is easy and simple to setup and does not require any extra infrastructure. We can also configure it to use Password hash sync which will allow Azure AD to do the authentication process. Problem with doing this is that we lose a lot of stuff which we might use on an on-premises solution Audit policies Existing MFA (If we use Azure AD as authentication point we need to use Azure MFA) Delegated Access via Intune Lockdown and password changes (Since we need change to be synced to Azure AD before the user changes will be taken into effect) NOTE: Now since I am above average interested in Netscaler I wanted to include another sentence here, for those that don\u2019t know is that Netscaler with AAA can in essence replace ADFS since Netscaler now supports SAML iDP. Some important issues to note is that Netscaler does not support \u2022 Single Logout profile; \u2022 Identity Provider Discovery profile from the SAML profiles. We can also use Netscaler Unified Gateway with SSO to Office365 with SAML. The setup guide can be found here https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2015\/04\/01\/netscaler-and-office365-saml-idp-setup\/ NOTE: We can also use Vmware Identity manager as an replacement to deliver SSO. Using ADFS gives alot of advantages that password hash does not. True SSO (While password hash gives Same Sign-on) If we have Audit policies in place Disabled users get locked out immidietly instead of 3 hours wait time until the Azure AD connect syng engine starts replicating, and 5 minutes for password changes. If we have on-premises two-factor authentication we can most likely integrate it with ADFS but not if we have only password hash sync Other security policies, like time of the day restrictions and so on. Some licensing stuff requires federation So to sum it up, please use federation Initial Office configuration setup Secondly, using the Office suite from Office365 uses something called Click-to-run, which is kinda an app-v wrapped Office package from Microsoft, which allows for easy updates from Microsoft directly instead of dabbling with the MSI installer. In order to customize this installer we need to use the Office deployment toolkit which basically allows us to customize the deployment using an XML file. The deployment tool has three switches that we can use. setup.exe \/download configuration.xml setup.exe \/configure configuration.xml setup.exe \/packager configuration.xml NOTE: Using the \/packager creates an App-V package of Office365 Click-To-run and requires a clean VM like we do when doing sequencing on App-V, which can then be distributed using existing App-V infrastructure or using other tools. But remember to enable scripting on the App-V client and do not alter the package using sequencing tool it is not supported. The download part downloads Office based upon the configuration file here we can specify bit editions, versions number, office applications to be included and update path and so on. The Configuration XML file looks like this. Now if you are like me and don't remember all the different XML parameters you can use this site to customize your own XML file --> http:\/\/officedev.github.io\/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts\/XmlEditor.html When you are done configuring the XML file you can choose the export button to have the XML file downloaded. If we have specified a specific Office version as part of the configuration.xml it will be downloaded to a seperate folder and storaged locally when we run the command setup.exe \/download configuration.xml NOTE: The different build numbers are available here --> http:\/\/support2.microsoft.com\/gp\/office-2013-365-update? When we are done with the download of the click-to-run installer. We can change the configuration file to reflect the path of the office download When we do the setup.exe \/configure configuration.xml path Deployment of Office The main deployment is done using the setup.exe \/configure configuration.xml file on the RSDH host. After the installation is complete Shared Computer Support \n\nIn the configuration file we need to remember to enable SharedComputerSupport licensing or else we get this error message. \n\nIf you forgot you can also enable is using this registry key (just store it as an .reg file)\nWindows Registry Editor Version 5.00\n[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Office\\15.0\\ClickToRun\\Configuration]\"InstallationPath\"=\"C:\\\\Program Files\\\\Microsoft Office 15\"\"SharedComputerLicensing\"=\"1\nNow we are actually done with the golden image setup, don\u2019t start the application yet if you want to use it for an image. Also make sure that there are no licenses installed on the host, which can be done using this tool.\ncd 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office15'cscript.exe .\\OSPP.VBS \/dstatus\n\nThis should be blank!\nAnother issue with this is that when a user starts an office app for the first time he\/she needs to authenticate once, then a token will be stored locally on the %localappdata%\\Microsoft\\Office\\15.0\\Licensing folder, and will expire within a couple of days if the user is not active on the terminalserver. Think about it, if we have a large farm with many servers that might be the case and if a user is redirected to another server he\/she will need to authenticate again. If the user is going against one server, the token will automatically refresh. NOTE: This requires Internet access to work.\nAnd important to remember that the Shared Computer support token is bound to the machine, so we cannot roam that token around computers or using any profile management tool.\nBut a nice thing is that if we have ADFS setup, we can setup Office365 to automatically activate against Office365, this is enabled by default. So no pesky logon screens. \nJust need to add the ADFS domain site to trusted sites on Internet Explorer and define this settings as well\nAutomatic logon only in Intranet Zone\n\nWhich allows us to basically resolve the token issue with Shared Computer Support \nOptimizing Skype for Buisness\nSo in regards to Skype for Buisness what options do we have in order to deliver a good user experience for it ? We have four options that I want to explore upon.\n\nVDI plugin \nNative RDP with UDP \nNatnix PCoIP \nNative ICA (w or without audio over UDP) \nLocal app access \nHDX Optimization Pack 2.0\nNow the issue with the first one (which is a Microsoft plugin is that it does not support Office365, it requires on-premises Lync\/Skype) another issue that you cannot use VDI plugin and optimization pack at the same time, so if users are using VDI plugin and you want to switch to optimization pack you need to remove the VDI plugin\nICA uses TCP protcol works with most endpoints, since its basically running everyone directly on the server\/vdi so the issue here is that we get no server offloading. So if we have 100 users running a video conference we might have a issue If the two other options are not available try to setup HDX realtime using audio over UDP for better audio performance. Both RDP and PCoIP use UDP for Audio\/Video and therefore do not require any other specific customization.\nBut the problems with all these are that they make a tromboning effect and consumes more bandwidth and eats up the resources on the session host\n\nLocal App from Citrix access might be a viable option, which in essence means that a local application will be dragged into the receiver session, but this requires that the enduser has Lync\/Skype installed. This also requires platinum licenses so not everyone has that + at it only supports Windows endpoints\u2026\nThe last and most important piece is the HDX optimization pack which allows the use of server offloading using HDX media engine on the end user device\nAnd the optimization pack supports Office365 with federated user and cloud only users. It also supports the latest clients (Skype for buisness) and can work in conjunction with Netscaler Gateway and Lync edge server for on-premises deployments. So means that we can get Mac\/Linux\/Windows users using server offloading, and with the latest release it also supports Office click-to-run and works with the native Skype UI\nSo using this feature we can offload the RSDH\/VDI instances from CPU\/Memory and eventually GPU directly back to the client. And Audio\/video traffic is going to the endpoint directly and not to the remote session\n\nHere is a simple test showing the difference between running Skype for buisness on a terminal server with and without HDX Optimization Pack 2.0\n\nHere is a complete blogpost on setting up HDX Optimization Pack 2.0 https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2016\/01\/02\/citrix-hdx-optimization-pack-2-0\/\nNow for more of the this part, we also have Outlook. Which for many is quite the headache\u2026. and that is most because of the OST files that is dropped in the %localappdata% folder for each user. Office ProPlus has a setting called fast access which means that Outlook will in most cases try to contact Office365 directly, but if the latency is becoming to high, the connection will drop and it will go and search trough the OST files.\n\nOptimizing Outlook\n\n\n\n\n\nNow this is the big elefant in the room and causes the most headaches. Since Outlook against Office365 can be setup in two modes either using Cached mode and the other using Online mode. Online modes uses direct access to Office365 but users loose features like instant search and such. In order to deliver a good user experience we need to compromise, the general guideline here is to configure cached mode with 3 months, and define to store the OST file (Which contains the emails, calender, etc) and is typically 60-80% than the email folder) on a network share. Since these OST files are by default created in the local appdata profile and using streaming profile management solutions aren\u2019t typically a good fit for the OST file.\n. Important to note that Microsoft supports having OST files on a network share, IF! there is adequate bandwidth and low latency\u2026 and only if there is one OST file and the users have Outlook 2010 SP1\nNOTE: We can use other alternatives such as FSLogix, Unidesk to fix the Profile management in a better way.\nIll come back to the configuration part later in the Policy bits. And important to remember is to use Office Outlook over 2013 SP1 which gives MAPI over HTTP, instead of RCP over HTTP which does not consume that much bandwidth. \nOneDrive\nIn regards to OneDrive try to exclude that from RSDH\/VDI instances since the sync engine basically doesnt work very well and now that each user has 1 TB of storagee space, it will flood the storage quicker then anything else, if users are allowed to use it. Also there is no central management capabilities and network shares are not supported.\nThere are some changes in the upcoming unified client, in terms of deployment and management but still not a good solution. \nYou can remove it from the Office365 deployment by adding this in the configuration file. \n \nOptimization and group policy tuning\nNow something that should be noted is that before installing Office365 click-to-run you should optimize the RSDH sessions hosts or the VDI instance. A blogpost which was published by Citrix noted a 20% in performance after some simple RSDH optimization was done. \nBoth Vmware and Citrix have free tools which allow to do RSDH\/VDI Optimization which should be looked at before doing anything else. \nNow the rest is mostly doing Group Policy tuning. Firstly we need to download the ADMX templates from Microsoft (either 2013 or 2016) then we need to add them to the central store. \nWe can then use Group Policy to manage the specific applications and how they behave. Another thing to think about is using Target Version group policy to manage which specific build we want to be on so we don\u2019t have a new build each time Microsoft rolls-out a new version, because from experience I can tell that some new builds include new bugs \u2013> https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2015\/03\/09\/trouble-with-office365-shared-computer-support-on-february-and-december-builds\/\n\nNow the most important policies are stored in the computer configuration. \nComputer Configuration \u2013> Policies \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Updates\nHere there are a few settings we should change to manage updates. \n\nEnable Automatic Updates \nEnable Automatic Upgrades \nHide Option to enable or disable updates \nUpdate Path \nUpdate Deadline \nTarget Version\nThese control how we do updates, we can specify enable automatic updates, without a update path and a target version, which will essentually make Office auto update to the latest version from Microsoft office. Or we can specify an update path (to a network share were we have downloaded a specific version) specify a target version) and do enable automatic updates and define a baseline) for a a specific OU for instance, this will trigger an update using a built-in task schedulerer which is added with Office, when the deadline is approaching Office has built in triggers to notify end users of the deployment. So using these policies we can have multiple deployment to specific users\/computers. Some with the latest version and some using a specific version. \nNext thing is for Remote Desktop Services only, if we are using pure RDS to make sure that we have an optimized setup. NOTE: Do not touch if everything is working as intended.\nComputer Policies \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Windows Components \u2013> Remote Desktop Services \u2013> Remote Desktop Session Host \u2013> Remote Session Enviroment \n\nLimit maximum color depth (Set to16-bits) less data across the wire) \nConfigure compression for RemoteFX data (set to bandwidth optimized) \nConfigure RemoteFX Adaptive Graphics ( set to bandwidth optimized)\nNext there are more Office specific policies to make sure that we disable all the stuff we don\u2019t need.\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Miscellaneous \n\nDo not use hardware graphics acceleration \nDisable Office animations \nDisable Office backgrounds \nDisable the Office start screen \nSupress the recommended settings dialog\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates -->Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Global Options \u2013> Customizehide\n\nMenu animations (disabled!)\nNext is under \nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> First Run\n\nDisable First Run Movie \nDisable Office First Run Movie on application boot\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Subscription Activation\n\nAutomatically activate Office with federated organization credentials\nLast but not least, define Cached mode for Outlook\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Outlook 2013 \u2013> Account Settings \u2013> Exchange \u2013> Cached Exchange Modes\n\nCached Exchange Mode (File Cached Exchange Mode) \nCached Exchange Mode Sync Settings (3 months)\nThen specify the location of the OST files, which of course is somewhere else\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Outlook 2013 \u2013> Miscellanous \u2013> PST Settings\n\nDefault Location for OST files (Change this to a network share\nNetwork and bandwidth tips\nSomething that you need to be aware of this the bandwidth usage of Office in a terminal server enviroment. \nAverage latency to Office is 50 \u2013 70 MS \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users using Online mode in OutlookAbout 20 mbps at peak \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users using Cached mode in OutlookAbout 10 mbps at peak \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users using audio calls in Lync About 110 mbps at peak \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users working Office using RDP About 180 mbps at peak \nWhich means using for instance HDX optimization pack for 2000 users might \u201cremove\u201d 110 mbps of bandwidth usage. \nMicrosoft also has an application called Office365 client analyzer, which can give us a baseline to see how our network is against Office365, such as DNS, Latency to Office365 and such. And DNS is quite important in Office365 because Microsoft uses proximity based load balancing and if your DNS server is located elsewhere then your clients you might be sent in the wrong direction. The client analyzer can give you that information. \n\n(We could however buy ExpressRoute from Microsoft which would give us low-latency connections directly to their datacenters, but this is only suiteable for LARGER enterprises, since it costs HIGH amounts of $$)\n\nBut this is for the larger enterprises which allows them to overcome the basic limitations of TCP stack which allow for limited amount of external connection to about 4000 connections at the same time. (One external NAT can support about 4,000 connections, given that Outlook consumes about 4 concurrent connections and Lync some as well)\nBecause Microsoft recommands that in a online scenario that the clients does not have more then 110 MS latency to Office365, and in my case I have about 60 \u2013 70 MS latency. If we combine that with some packet loss or adjusted MTU well you get the picture \nUsing Outlook Online mode, we should have a MAX latency of 110 MS above that will decline the user experience. Another thing is that using online mode disables instant search. We can use the exchange traffic excel calculator from Microsoft to calculate the amount of bandwidth requirements.\nSome rule of thumbs, do some calculations! Use the bandwidth calculators for Lync\/Exchange which might point you in the right direction. We can also use WAN accelerators (w\/caching) for instance which might also lighten the burden on the bandwidth usage. You also need to think about the bandwidth usage if you are allow automatic updates enabled in your enviroment. \nTroubleshooting tips\nAs the last part of this LOOONG post I have some general tips on using Office in a virtual enviroment. This is just gonna be a long list of different tips\n\nFor Hyper-V deployments, check VMQ and latest NIC drivers \n32-bits Office C2R typically works better then 64-bits \nAntivirus ? Make Exceptions! \nRemove Office products that you don\u2019t need from the configuration, since this add extra traffic when doing downloads and more stuff added to the virtual machines \nIf you don\u2019t use lync and audio service (disable the audio service! ) \nIf using RDSH (Check the Group policy settings I recommended above) \nIf using Citrix or VMware (Make sure to tune the polices for an optimal experience, and using the RSDH\/VDI optimization tools from the different vendors) \nIf Outlook is sluggish, check that you have adequate storage I\/O to the network share (NO HIGH BANDWIDTH IS NOT ENOUGH IF STORED ON A SIMPLE RAID WITH 10k disks) \nIf all else failes on Outlook (Disable MAPI over HTTP) In some cases when getting new mail takes a long time try to disable this, used to be a known error)\nRemote display protocols\nLast but not least I want to mention this briefly, if you are setting up a new solution and thinking about choosing one vendor over the other. The first of is \n\nEndpoint requirements (Thin clients, Windows, Mac, Linux) \nRequirements in terms of GPU, Mobile workers etc)\nNow we have done some tests, which shown the Citrix has the best feature across the different sub protocols \n\nThinWire (Best across high latency lines, using TCP works over 1800 MS Latency) \nFramehawk (Work good at 20% packet loss lines)\nWhile PcoIP performs a bit better then RDP, I have another blogpost on the subject here \u2013> https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/06\/putting-thinwire-and-framehawk-to-the-test\/\n\n#chelsea, #citrix, #hdx, #ica, #office365, #pcoip, #punchflix, #rds, #vmware","contentFiltered":"So this is a blogpost based upon a session I had at NIC conference, where I spoke about how to optimize the delivery of Office365 in a VDI\/RSDH enviroment. \nThere are multiple stuff we need to think \/ worry about. Might seem a bit negative, but that is not the idea just being realistic \nSo this blogpost will cover the following subjects\nFederation and sync \nInstalling and managing updates\nOptimizing Office ProPlus for VDI\/RDS \nOffice ProPlus optimal delivery \nShared Computer Support \nSkype for Buisness \nOutlook \nOneDrive\nTroubleshooting and general tips for tuning\nRemote display protocols and when to use when.\nSo what is the main issue with using Terminal Servers and Office365? The Distance\u2026.\nThis is the headline for a blogpost on Citrix blogs about XenApp best pratices\n\nSo how to fix this when we have our clients on one side, the infrastructure in another and the Office365 in a different region ? Seperated with long miles and still try to deliver the best experience for the end-user, so In some case we need to compromise to be able to deliver the best user experience. Because that should be our end goal Deliver the best user experience \n\nUser Access\nFirst of is, do we need to have federation or just plain password sync in place? Using password sync is easy and simple to setup and does not require any extra infrastructure. We can also configure it to use Password hash sync which will allow Azure AD to do the authentication process. Problem with doing this is that we lose a lot of stuff which we might use on an on-premises solution\nAudit policies\nExisting MFA (If we use Azure AD as authentication point we need to use Azure MFA)\nDelegated Access via Intune\nLockdown and password changes (Since we need change to be synced to Azure AD before the user changes will be taken into effect)\n\nNOTE: Now since I am above average interested in Netscaler I wanted to include another sentence here, for those that don\u2019t know is that Netscaler with AAA can in essence replace ADFS since Netscaler now supports SAML iDP. Some important issues to note is that Netscaler does not support \u2022 Single Logout profile; \u2022 Identity Provider Discovery profile from the SAML profiles. We can also use Netscaler Unified Gateway with SSO to Office365 with SAML. The setup guide can be found here\nhttps:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2015\/04\/01\/netscaler-and-office365-saml-idp-setup\/\nNOTE: We can also use Vmware Identity manager as an replacement to deliver SSO.\nUsing ADFS gives alot of advantages that password hash does not.\nTrue SSO (While password hash gives Same Sign-on)\nIf we have Audit policies in place\nDisabled users get locked out immidietly instead of 3 hours wait time until the Azure AD connect syng engine starts replicating, and 5 minutes for password changes.\nIf we have on-premises two-factor authentication we can most likely integrate it with ADFS but not if we have only password hash sync\nOther security policies, like time of the day restrictions and so on.\nSome licensing stuff requires federation\nSo to sum it up, please use federation\nInitial Office configuration setup\nSecondly, using the Office suite from Office365 uses something called Click-to-run, which is kinda an app-v wrapped Office package from Microsoft, which allows for easy updates from Microsoft directly instead of dabbling with the MSI installer.\nIn order to customize this installer we need to use the Office deployment toolkit which basically allows us to customize the deployment using an XML file.\nThe deployment tool has three switches that we can use.\nsetup.exe \/download configuration.xml\nsetup.exe \/configure configuration.xml\nsetup.exe \/packager configuration.xml\nNOTE: Using the \/packager creates an App-V package of Office365 Click-To-run and requires a clean VM like we do when doing sequencing on App-V, which can then be distributed using existing App-V infrastructure or using other tools. But remember to enable scripting on the App-V client and do not alter the package using sequencing tool it is not supported. \nThe download part downloads Office based upon the configuration file here we can specify bit editions, versions number, office applications to be included and update path and so on. The Configuration XML file looks like this. \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \nNow if you are like me and don\u2019t remember all the different XML parameters you can use this site to customize your own XML file \u2013> http:\/\/officedev.github.io\/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts\/XmlEditor.html \nWhen you are done configuring the XML file you can choose the export button to have the XML file downloaded. \nIf we have specified a specific Office version as part of the configuration.xml it will be downloaded to a seperate folder and storaged locally when we run the command setup.exe \/download configuration.xml \nNOTE: The different build numbers are available here \u2013> http:\/\/support2.microsoft.com\/gp\/office-2013-365-update? \nWhen we are done with the download of the click-to-run installer. We can change the configuration file to reflect the path of the office download \n \nWhen we do the setup.exe \/configure configuration.xml path \nDeployment of Office\nThe main deployment is done using the setup.exe \/configure configuration.xml file on the RSDH host. After the installation is complete\nShared Computer Support\n \n\nIn the configuration file we need to remember to enable SharedComputerSupport licensing or else we get this error message. \n\nIf you forgot you can also enable is using this registry key (just store it as an .reg file)\nWindows Registry Editor Version 5.00\n[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Office\\15.0\\ClickToRun\\Configuration]\u00abInstallationPath\u00bb=\u00bbC:\\\\Program Files\\\\Microsoft Office 15\u00bb\u00abSharedComputerLicensing\u00bb=\u00bb1\nNow we are actually done with the golden image setup, don\u2019t start the application yet if you want to use it for an image. Also make sure that there are no licenses installed on the host, which can be done using this tool.\ncd \u2018C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\Office15\u2019cscript.exe .\\OSPP.VBS \/dstatus\n\nThis should be blank!\nAnother issue with this is that when a user starts an office app for the first time he\/she needs to authenticate once, then a token will be stored locally on the %localappdata%\\Microsoft\\Office\\15.0\\Licensing folder, and will expire within a couple of days if the user is not active on the terminalserver. Think about it, if we have a large farm with many servers that might be the case and if a user is redirected to another server he\/she will need to authenticate again. If the user is going against one server, the token will automatically refresh. NOTE: This requires Internet access to work.\nAnd important to remember that the Shared Computer support token is bound to the machine, so we cannot roam that token around computers or using any profile management tool.\nBut a nice thing is that if we have ADFS setup, we can setup Office365 to automatically activate against Office365, this is enabled by default. So no pesky logon screens. \nJust need to add the ADFS domain site to trusted sites on Internet Explorer and define this settings as well\nAutomatic logon only in Intranet Zone\n\nWhich allows us to basically resolve the token issue with Shared Computer Support \nOptimizing Skype for Buisness\nSo in regards to Skype for Buisness what options do we have in order to deliver a good user experience for it ? We have four options that I want to explore upon.\nVDI plugin\nNative RDP with UDP\nNatnix PCoIP\nNative ICA (w or without audio over UDP)\nLocal app access\nHDX Optimization Pack 2.0\nNow the issue with the first one (which is a Microsoft plugin is that it does not support Office365, it requires on-premises Lync\/Skype) another issue that you cannot use VDI plugin and optimization pack at the same time, so if users are using VDI plugin and you want to switch to optimization pack you need to remove the VDI plugin\nICA uses TCP protcol works with most endpoints, since its basically running everyone directly on the server\/vdi so the issue here is that we get no server offloading. So if we have 100 users running a video conference we might have a issue If the two other options are not available try to setup HDX realtime using audio over UDP for better audio performance. Both RDP and PCoIP use UDP for Audio\/Video and therefore do not require any other specific customization.\nBut the problems with all these are that they make a tromboning effect and consumes more bandwidth and eats up the resources on the session host\n\nLocal App from Citrix access might be a viable option, which in essence means that a local application will be dragged into the receiver session, but this requires that the enduser has Lync\/Skype installed. This also requires platinum licenses so not everyone has that + at it only supports Windows endpoints\u2026\nThe last and most important piece is the HDX optimization pack which allows the use of server offloading using HDX media engine on the end user device\nAnd the optimization pack supports Office365 with federated user and cloud only users. It also supports the latest clients (Skype for buisness) and can work in conjunction with Netscaler Gateway and Lync edge server for on-premises deployments. So means that we can get Mac\/Linux\/Windows users using server offloading, and with the latest release it also supports Office click-to-run and works with the native Skype UI\nSo using this feature we can offload the RSDH\/VDI instances from CPU\/Memory and eventually GPU directly back to the client. And Audio\/video traffic is going to the endpoint directly and not to the remote session\n\nHere is a simple test showing the difference between running Skype for buisness on a terminal server with and without HDX Optimization Pack 2.0\n\nHere is a complete blogpost on setting up HDX Optimization Pack 2.0 https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2016\/01\/02\/citrix-hdx-optimization-pack-2-0\/\nNow for more of the this part, we also have Outlook. Which for many is quite the headache\u2026. and that is most because of the OST files that is dropped in the %localappdata% folder for each user. Office ProPlus has a setting called fast access which means that Outlook will in most cases try to contact Office365 directly, but if the latency is becoming to high, the connection will drop and it will go and search trough the OST files.\n\nOptimizing Outlook\n\n\n\n\n\nNow this is the big elefant in the room and causes the most headaches. Since Outlook against Office365 can be setup in two modes either using Cached mode and the other using Online mode. Online modes uses direct access to Office365 but users loose features like instant search and such. In order to deliver a good user experience we need to compromise, the general guideline here is to configure cached mode with 3 months, and define to store the OST file (Which contains the emails, calender, etc) and is typically 60-80% than the email folder) on a network share. Since these OST files are by default created in the local appdata profile and using streaming profile management solutions aren\u2019t typically a good fit for the OST file.\n. Important to note that Microsoft supports having OST files on a network share, IF! there is adequate bandwidth and low latency\u2026 and only if there is one OST file and the users have Outlook 2010 SP1\nNOTE: We can use other alternatives such as FSLogix, Unidesk to fix the Profile management in a better way.\nIll come back to the configuration part later in the Policy bits. And important to remember is to use Office Outlook over 2013 SP1 which gives MAPI over HTTP, instead of RCP over HTTP which does not consume that much bandwidth. \nOneDrive\nIn regards to OneDrive try to exclude that from RSDH\/VDI instances since the sync engine basically doesnt work very well and now that each user has 1 TB of storagee space, it will flood the storage quicker then anything else, if users are allowed to use it. Also there is no central management capabilities and network shares are not supported.\nThere are some changes in the upcoming unified client, in terms of deployment and management but still not a good solution. \nYou can remove it from the Office365 deployment by adding\u00a0 this in the configuration file. \n \nOptimization and group policy tuning\nNow something that should be noted is that before installing Office365 click-to-run you should optimize the RSDH sessions hosts or the VDI instance. A blogpost which was published by Citrix noted a 20% in performance after some simple RSDH optimization was done. \nBoth Vmware and Citrix have free tools which allow to do RSDH\/VDI Optimization which should be looked at before doing anything else. \nNow the rest is mostly doing Group Policy tuning. Firstly we need to download the ADMX templates from Microsoft (either 2013 or 2016) then we need to add them to the central store. \nWe can then use Group Policy to manage the specific applications and how they behave. Another thing to think about is using Target Version group policy to manage which specific build we want to be on so we don\u2019t have a new build each time Microsoft rolls-out a new version, because from experience I can tell that some new builds include new bugs \u2013> https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2015\/03\/09\/trouble-with-office365-shared-computer-support-on-february-and-december-builds\/\n\nNow the most important policies are stored in the computer configuration. \nComputer Configuration \u2013> Policies \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Updates\nHere there are a few settings we should change to manage updates. \nEnable Automatic Updates \nEnable Automatic Upgrades\nHide Option to enable or disable updates\nUpdate Path \nUpdate Deadline\nTarget Version\nThese control how we do updates, we can specify enable automatic updates, without a update path and a target version, which will essentually make Office auto update to the latest version from Microsoft office. Or we can specify an update path (to a network share were we have downloaded a specific version) specify a target version) and do enable automatic updates and define a baseline) for a a specific OU for instance, this will trigger an update using a built-in task schedulerer which is added with Office, when the deadline is approaching Office has built in triggers to notify end users of the deployment. So using these policies we can have multiple deployment to specific users\/computers. Some with the latest version and some using a specific version. \nNext thing is for Remote Desktop Services only, if we are using pure RDS to make sure that we have an optimized setup.\u00a0 NOTE: Do not touch if everything is working as intended.\nComputer Policies \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Windows Components \u2013> Remote Desktop Services \u2013> Remote Desktop Session Host \u2013> Remote Session Enviroment \nLimit maximum color depth (Set to16-bits) less data across the wire)\nConfigure compression for RemoteFX data (set to bandwidth optimized)\nConfigure RemoteFX Adaptive Graphics ( set to bandwidth optimized)\nNext there are more Office specific policies to make sure that we disable all the stuff we don\u2019t need.\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Miscellaneous \nDo not use hardware graphics acceleration\nDisable Office animations\nDisable Office backgrounds\nDisable the Office start screen\nSupress the recommended settings dialog\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates\u00a0 \u2013>Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Global Options \u2013> Customizehide\nMenu animations (disabled!)\nNext is under \nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> First Run\nDisable First Run Movie\nDisable Office First Run Movie on application boot\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Office 2013 \u2013> Subscription Activation\nAutomatically activate Office with federated organization credentials\nLast but not least, define Cached mode for Outlook\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Outlook 2013 \u2013> Account Settings \u2013> Exchange \u2013> Cached Exchange Modes\nCached Exchange Mode (File Cached Exchange Mode)\nCached Exchange Mode Sync Settings (3 months)\nThen specify the location of the OST files, which of course is somewhere else\nUser Configuration \u2013> Administrative Templates \u2013> Microsoft Outlook 2013 \u2013> Miscellanous \u2013> PST Settings\nDefault Location for OST files (Change this to a network share\nNetwork and bandwidth tips\nSomething that you need to be aware of this the bandwidth usage of Office in a terminal server enviroment. \nAverage latency to Office is 50 \u2013 70 MS \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users using Online mode in OutlookAbout 20 mbps at peak \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users using Cached mode in OutlookAbout 10 mbps at peak \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users using audio calls in Lync About 110 mbps at peak \n\u2022 2000 \u00abHeavy\u00bb users working Office using RDP About 180 mbps at peak \nWhich means using for instance HDX optimization pack for 2000 users might \u201cremove\u201d 110 mbps of bandwidth usage. \nMicrosoft also has an application called Office365 client analyzer, which can give us a baseline to see how our network is against Office365, such as DNS, Latency to Office365 and such. And DNS is quite important in Office365 because Microsoft uses proximity based load balancing and if your DNS server is located elsewhere then your clients you might be sent in the wrong direction. The client analyzer can give you that information. \n\n(We could however buy ExpressRoute from Microsoft which would give us low-latency connections directly to their datacenters, but this is only suiteable for LARGER enterprises, since it costs HIGH amounts of $$)\n\nBut this is for the larger enterprises which allows them to overcome the basic limitations of TCP stack which allow for limited amount of external connection to about 4000 connections at the same time. (One external NAT can support about 4,000 connections, given that Outlook consumes about 4 concurrent connections and Lync some as well)\nBecause Microsoft recommands that in a online scenario that the clients does not have more then 110 MS latency to Office365, and in my case I have about 60 \u2013 70 MS latency. If we combine that with some packet loss or adjusted MTU well you get the picture \u00a0\nUsing Outlook Online mode, we should have a MAX latency of 110 MS above that will decline the user experience. Another thing is that using online mode disables instant search. We can use the exchange traffic excel calculator from Microsoft to calculate the amount of bandwidth requirements.\nSome rule of thumbs, do some calculations! Use the bandwidth calculators for Lync\/Exchange which might point you in the right direction. We can also use WAN accelerators (w\/caching) for instance which might also lighten the burden on the bandwidth usage. You also need to think about the bandwidth usage if you are allow automatic updates enabled in your enviroment. \nTroubleshooting tips\nAs the last part of this LOOONG post I have some general tips on using Office in a virtual enviroment. This is just gonna be a long list of different tips\nFor Hyper-V deployments, check VMQ and latest NIC drivers\n32-bits Office C2R typically works better then 64-bits\nAntivirus ? Make Exceptions!\nRemove Office products that you don\u2019t need from the configuration, since this add extra traffic when doing downloads and more stuff added to the virtual machines\nIf you don\u2019t use lync and audio service (disable the audio service! )\nIf using RDSH (Check the Group policy settings I recommended above)\nIf using Citrix or VMware (Make sure to tune the polices for an optimal experience, and using the RSDH\/VDI optimization tools from the different vendors)\nIf Outlook is sluggish, check that you have adequate storage I\/O to the network share (NO HIGH BANDWIDTH IS NOT ENOUGH IF STORED ON A SIMPLE RAID WITH 10k disks)\nIf all else failes on Outlook (Disable MAPI over HTTP) In some cases when getting new mail takes a long time try to disable this, used to be a known error)\nRemote display protocols\nLast but not least I want to mention this briefly, if you are setting up a new solution and thinking about choosing one vendor over the other. The first of is \nEndpoint requirements (Thin clients, Windows, Mac, Linux)\nRequirements in terms of GPU, Mobile workers etc)\nNow we have done some tests, which shown the Citrix has the best feature across the different sub protocols \nThinWire (Best across high latency lines, using TCP works over 1800 MS Latency)\nFramehawk (Work good at 20% packet loss lines)\nWhile PcoIP performs a bit better then RDP, I have another blogpost on the subject here \u2013> https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2015\/11\/06\/putting-thinwire-and-framehawk-to-the-test\/\n#chelsea, #citrix, #hdx, #ica, #office365, #pcoip, #punchflix, #rds, #vmwareShare this:TwitterSvarLik dette:Lik Laster...\n\n\tRelatert\n","permalink":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2016\/02\/04\/office365-on-terminal-server-done-right\/","unixtime":1454595424,"unixtimeModified":1454595424,"entryHeaderMeta":"","linkPages":"","footerEntryMeta":"","tagsRaw":"Chelsea, citrix, hdx, ica, office365, pcoip, punchflix, rds, vmware","tagsArray":["label":"Chelsea","count":1,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/chelsea\/","label":"citrix","count":53,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/citrix\/","label":"hdx","count":1,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/hdx\/","label":"ica","count":2,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/ica\/","label":"office365","count":10,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/office365\/","label":"pcoip","count":1,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/pcoip\/","label":"punchflix","count":2,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/punchflix\/","label":"rds","count":6,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/rds\/","label":"vmware","count":17,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/vmware\/"],"loginRedirectURL":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmsandbu.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F02%2F04%2Foffice365-on-terminal-server-done-right%2F","hasPrevPost":true,"prevPostTitle":"Getting started with Vmware AppVolumes","prevPostURL":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2016\/02\/01\/getting-started-with-vmware-appvolumes\/","hasNextPost":true,"nextPostTitle":"Application virtualization vs Application layering","nextPostURL":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2016\/02\/05\/application-virtualization-vs-application-layering\/","commentsOpen":true,"is_xpost":false,"editURL":null,"postActions":"InnleggshandlingerRullKortlenke","comments":["type":"comment","id":"8390","postID":"6128","postTitleRaw":"Office365 on Terminal server done\u00a0right","cssClasses":"comment even thread-even depth-1","parentID":"0","contentRaw":"Great post! \n\nWe are starting to use Office365 with our Citrix Xenapp 6.5 environment with Citrix Provisioning Server but have found that the credentials for login to the Office365 portal get lost after each reboot?\nAny ideas how we can solve this?\n\nThanks\n\nPaul.","contentFiltered":"Great post! \nWe are starting to use Office365 with our Citrix Xenapp 6.5 environment with Citrix Provisioning Server but have found that the credentials for login to the Office365 portal get lost after each reboot?\nAny ideas how we can solve this?\nThanks\nPaul.\n","permalink":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2016\/02\/04\/office365-on-terminal-server-done-right\/#comment-8390","unixtime":1480095376,"loginRedirectURL":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmsandbu.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F02%2F04%2Foffice365-on-terminal-server-done-right%2F%23comment-8390","approved":true,"isTrashed":false,"prevDeleted":"","editURL":null,"depth":1,"commentDropdownActions":"","commentFooterActions":"Svar","commentTrashedActions":"Gjenopprett fra papirkurven","mentions":[],"mentionContext":"","commentCreated":"1480095376","hasChildren":false,"noprivUserName":"Paul","noprivUserHash":"1d84f536dc3f802695df696432064151","noprivUserURL":"http:\/\/false","type":"comment","id":"8391","postID":"6128","postTitleRaw":"Office365 on Terminal server done\u00a0right","cssClasses":"comment byuser comment-author-msandbu bypostauthor odd alt depth-2","parentID":"8390","contentRaw":"hi paul, im guessing that you reboot your xa servers via PVS each night?","contentFiltered":"hi paul, im guessing that you reboot your xa servers via PVS each night?\n","permalink":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/2016\/02\/04\/office365-on-terminal-server-done-right\/#comment-8391","unixtime":1480095671,"loginRedirectURL":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmsandbu.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F02%2F04%2Foffice365-on-terminal-server-done-right%2F%23comment-8391","approved":true,"isTrashed":false,"prevDeleted":"","editURL":null,"depth":2,"commentDropdownActions":"","commentFooterActions":"Svar","commentTrashedActions":"Gjenopprett fra papirkurven","mentions":[],"mentionContext":"","commentCreated":1480095671,"hasChildren":false,"userLogin":"msandbu","userNicename":"msandbu"],"postFormat":"standard","postMeta":"isSticky":false,"postTerms":"category":["label":"Uncategorized","count":549,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/category\/uncategorized\/"],"post_tag":["label":"Chelsea","count":1,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/chelsea\/","label":"citrix","count":53,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/citrix\/","label":"hdx","count":1,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/hdx\/","label":"ica","count":2,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/ica\/","label":"office365","count":10,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/office365\/","label":"pcoip","count":1,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/pcoip\/","label":"punchflix","count":2,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/punchflix\/","label":"rds","count":6,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/rds\/","label":"vmware","count":17,"link":"https:\/\/msandbu.wordpress.com\/tag\/vmware\/"],"post_format":[],"pluginData":[],"isPage":false,"mentions":[],"mentionContext":"","isTrashed":false,"userLogin":"msandbu","userNicename":"msandbu"}]Paul5:36 pm på november 25, 2016Great post! 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