Ability to install Microsoft Store apps

Feature Requests
1

Hi Team, it would be great to be able to install Microsoft store apps.
E.g. - Raw Image Extension, HEIF Image Extensions, HEVC Video Extension.

Currently I believe these must be installed via Intune where required

2

Agreed, I really need a way to install store apps other than intune

3

Have you tried creating a task that just runs WinGet? Then just have the test check for the app using get-appxpackage

1 Like
4

Agreed, a native feature built in would be nice.

In the mean time you can push appx’s from Immy.
Check out “Trello (UWP)” or “FortiClient Windows Native (UWP)” in global software for an example deployment using an appx.

5

I just tested this out with a custom task using WinGet and it worked just fine.

image
image1813Ă—769 37 KB

Test script:

$CheckInstall=Winget list "${SoftwareName}"
if ($CheckInstall -match "No installed package found matching input criteria."){
    return $False
}
else {
    return $True
}

Set Script:

Winget Install --id $WingetID --source $Source

Of course, WinGet will need to be installed first. I dont see that already baked in. I have a script here which should do the trick Misc.-Tools/Install-Winget.ps1 at main · djust270/Misc.-Tools · GitHub

6

The only prerequisite would be to make sure that the App Installer is actually installed and sufficiently updated. Looks good though!

7

I think this would be a great feature addition for Immy.

8

I would caution you all to not rely on winget. It is not as up to date or complete as you think. @Anthony_Birone and I had a debate about it one evening, and the point that I was able to make is that it does not have a reliable update mechanism–in other words, the maintainers need to keep versions up to date “by hand.”

If anyone knows me well enough, they know I do not like chocolatey—and I feel like winget is really no better.

There are some scripts @Gav has been working on (I help here and there) that can theoretically be used to install/uninstall most store apps. What’s still an issue is having Immy be able to check for later versions in order to force updates to those apps during maintenance–@Anthony_Birone and I spent some time digging around for proper Microsoft store APIs to do this. So far we have found a website that will get us that information, but I don’t trust it (because, well, it’s not a Microsoft site). Even so, I believe store apps are supposed to update themselves, but Immy should be able to bring these apps up to date regardless imo in order to truly achieve desired state.

All of that said, I presume you folks all probably agree that you’d prefer, perhaps, to have Windows Store Apps display in the deployment drop down box in addition to global/local/chocolatey/ninite apps, yes?

1 Like
9

That would be great, but I can see the difficulty in getting there. Appx installs can be user, all users, or provisioned so I imagine it would be quite complex.

I think winget will get more and more functional (far from the likes of chocolatey), because it is effectively the replacement for WSfB in Intune which, if not already, is getting deprecated sometime this year