Trouble with "List of managed add-ins" for Office

[TomH201110141]

Hello,

I try to manage Office add-ins with the help of DEM. 

There are 6 different add-ins whose activation/deactivation I want to control with ADMX-based settings.
I have created an ADMX-based setting for each add-in. Unfortunately, these settings are skipped.

See example from FlexEngine-ADMX.log

2022-01-25 17:23:30.158 [DEBUG] Collecting actions ('Outlook - OLI2010.xml')
2022-01-25 17:23:30.158 [DEBUG] Skipping 'add value' action in ('Outlook - OLI2010.xml')[/Microsoft Outlook 2013/Miscellaneous][List of managed add-ins][@policyon]
2022-01-25 17:23:30.158 [DEBUG] -- Not applicable because of 'remove all values' action in ('Outlook - OLI2010.xml')[/Microsoft Outlook 2013/Miscellaneous][List of managed add-ins]
2022-01-25 17:23:30.160 [DEBUG] Skipping 'remove all values' action in ('Outlook - OLI2010.xml')[/Microsoft Outlook 2013/Miscellaneous][List of managed add-ins]
2022-01-25 17:23:30.160 [DEBUG] Skipping 'add value' action in ('Outlook - OLI2010.xml')[/Microsoft Outlook 2013/Miscellaneous][List of managed add-ins][@OLI2010]

I don't understand the "remove all value" action in line 3. There is no action in this admx-based setting.

[DEMdev]

Hi @TomH201110141,

The definition of that policy setting in the ADMX template contains <list id="L_ListOfManagedAddins2" explicitValue="true" />, and that explicitValue="true" means that previous values in the software\policies\microsoft\office\15.0\outlook\resiliency\addinlist key need to be removed before adding the one(s) defined in the policy setting. That's where that "remove all values" action is coming from.

This means that it's not possible to create individual ADMX-based settings for each add-in, as each will remove the previously added setting. (I expect your full ADMX log shows exactly one successful Created value 'OTHER' on key 'microsoft\office\15.0\outlook\resiliency\addinlist' ... log message, for the add-in configured in the "alphabetically latest" ADMX-based setting?)

[TomH201110141]

Thank you @DEMdev for explanation.

Do you have an idea how I can manage the add-ins with DEM? At the moment I don't have a good idea how to do that.

[DEMdev]

Hi @TomH201110141,

You will only be able to do that by defining multiple add-ins in a single ADMX-based setting. That's going to be annoying in case you'd like to target individual add-ins with conditions, as you will have to create multiple ADMX-based settings with different combinations of add-ins (one with just add-in 1, one with just add-in 2, one with both of them, one with just add-in 3, et cetera, et cetera), and put the correct "combined" conditions on each of those.

BTW, I just double-checked with "normal" Group Policy: if I create two separate GPOs, one for add-in 1, and the other for add-in 2, effectively only one setting gets applied. If I disable one of the GPOs, the setting from the other GPO gets applied correctly. If I enable both, I only get a single setting. (Just wanted to make sure my initial analysis was correct.)