Enabling express checkout

[NicOla]

Our organisation has user based deployments instead of device based deployments. Our App Portal adds users to available SCCM user collections. We are (again) thinking about implementing express checkout and are wondering what would happen if we turned it on now. I imagine that without changing the related install SCCM collections from Available to Required – users would still need to go to software center to install their ordered apps. For each Application Catalog item, is it possible to have more than one associated install SCCM assignment? Thanks.

[jdempsey · Accepted solution]

You are correct that if you don't change the deployments from available to required, users will still have to go to Software Center to initiate the install.  There is no way to have multiple SCCM deployments on a single catalog item.

On a related note, when we do new implementations, we always default to using device-based, required deployments.  The reason we use required deployments is so that user don't have to request it once in App Portal and again in Software Center.  The reason we use device-based deployments is to ensure license compliance for device-based licenses (and even user-based licenses that don't allow use on an unlimited number of devices).  If you leverage user-based deployments, the initial license check may pass, but then the user could install that application on any managed device they are able to log into.  As a result, if you only had one available device-based license for the application at the time of checkout, as soon as the user installs that software on a second device, you are out of compliance.

[NicOla]

Thanks Jim.

We work with user based available deployments so that the user will only have to request an app once and the install will follow them around. If they get a new device all their previously provisioned applications will be in software center for them to install if they still want that software on their new device – we don’t use required user collections as we didn’t want there to be a lot of forced installs when a user does log into a new device.

Our SAM team does a good job of handling licencing compliance so we don’t need to take that into consideration too much.

I’ll keep thinking about it and may be back with more questions 😊

[jdempsey]

I understand the rationale for that deployment model, and you're not the only organization I've worked with that does it that way (in fact, I'm working with 2 more right now that are the same way).  I just wanted to call out for the entire community's benefit why that may not be the best option and why we don't configure the product that way by default in our Flexera-led implementations.  It's great that your SAM team is on top of the license compliance, as that is essential in this configuration.  One other thing to consider is that App Broker does provide both OS Deployment capabilities and a separate clone/migrate feature that can help with the "user gets a new device" scenario.  These capabilities leverage FNMS inventory data to determine what software the user had installed on their old computer and then lets them choose what they would like to "migrate" to their new computer.  This allows you to use device-based deployments, but still provides the ability to easily reinstall those applications on a new device in a more controlled manner.