Migration and Deployment: Windows 8 App Policy and Sideloading Apps – Step by Step (Part 17 of 19) by Tommy Patterson

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In Part 16 of the Migration and Deployment Blog Series, Keith Mayer went over details on how to deploy Windows 8 applications using System Center 2012 SP1. In Part 17, Tommy Patterson looks at the same deployment scenario but without System Center 2012 SP1. He covers the topic of “Side Loading” the apps. 

I am including a brief snippet directly from Tommy’s blog post, but to read the full article, you will definitely want to go directly to his blog.

With Windows 8 comes the new modern UI which greatly enhances our abilities to provide a more immersive experience to the end user when it comes to Apps. In this article I will outline the steps for enabling administrators to push internal apps to client workstations via the process known as “sideloading.”

At high a level we will accomplish the following tasks:

Create a Group Policy for Sideloading Apps

Verify the Digital Signature of the App

Sideloading an App Per User

Creating a Group Policy for Sideloading Apps

First we must login to the domain controller and open Server Manager. Open the Tools menu and select Group Policy Management:

Next we need to choose the proper Domain in the Forest, then right click the Domain and select “Create a GPO in this domain, and Link it here…”:

Give the policy a name such as “App Sideloading Policy”:

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Harold Wong