Automate outlook profile creation

Question

I'm looking into setting up an automated process to create the user's outlook profile.

In my attempt to research setting this up, I find different names and their description claim to be the same thing, so now I'm puzzled what the kind of procedure it is that I want to learn more about.

I'm not asking for a learning recommendation, just what the name of the procedure is that I'm looking for, so I can continue my research.

My goal is that a user who never logged in, can start outlook and either press next, next, next, finish, or even better, start outlook, and the profile already is created during logon.

I will be using Office365 with Active Directory Sync and the domain will have the auto discover setup correctly.

So it should be that upon starting outlook, the email adress is already filled in to the user's email address, and the password will be the same as the one they used to login in the first place.

Is this Zero Config Exchange? Common Settings Discover? or something else?

Answer 1

It can be done two ways.

If deploying ProPlus with an .MSI you can use the “Office Customization Tool” to configure automatic profile configuration when Office is deployed.

You can also use GPO for either C2R or MSI versions. It is called Automatically configure profile based on Active Directory Primary SMTP address.

With Office 365 you’ll also have to have single sign on configured and Modern Authentication enabled, in which case a brand new user will open Outlook and be placed directly in their mailbox without any profile prompts.

Be sure to install the Office administrative templates if you plan to use GPO.

It's a combination of multiple technologies.

Here's ZeroConfigExchange explaining the GPO I mentioned: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/outlooking/2015/10/30/zeroconfigexchange-automating-the-creation-of-an-outlook-profile-for-exchange-online-accounts-and-exchange-on-premises-environments/

But, that only automatically configures the profile e-mail address, which allows Outlook to use AutoDiscover to find the exchange server settings.

Next, you'll be prompted for credentials TWICE.

Enable Single-Sign-On either through ADFS or with the newest AD Connect SSO feature: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/connect/active-directory-aadconnect-sso

You've now eliminated one set of username / password prompts. Next, make sure Modern Authentication is turned on to eliminate the other (it is by default on newer tenants, but not on older tenants): https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Using-Office-365-modern-authentication-with-Office-clients-776c0036-66fd-41cb-8928-5495c0f9168a

Outlook can now configure itself without any input from the user.