Feature in Preview! Win32 App Supersedence in Intune

This blog post is about the new ability that got added to Intune and I am talking about nothing but the Win32 App Supersedence feature.

Service Release 2102 brings in this much-awaited feature addition to Microsoft Intune – the ability to supersede Win32 apps.

Supersedence lets you to either

• update any previous win32 app deployment with a new version of the app (version update), or
• replace any previous win32 app deployment with a different application altogether.

Make a note of what MS mentions in its own documentation

There is a maximum of 10 updated or replaced apps, including references to other apps. For example, your app references another app. This other app references other apps, and so on. This scenario creates a graph of apps. All apps in the graph count toward the maximum value of 10.

Supersede Intune Win32 App – Admin Experience

When you are creating a Win32 app in the MEM Admin portal, you can decide to use the newly added supersedence ability to update or replace a previously deployed win32 app with this current Win32 app you are creating.

On the Supersedence tab of the Win32 app creation wizard in the MEM Admin portal, click on Add.

Choose any app from the list of pre-existing Win32 applications available in the tenant, that you would want to supersede.

Now comes the important point where you have to decide between if you would want to Uninstall previous version or not.

• If you are using the supersedence feature to replace an existing win32 app deployment with the current deployment, then set the Uninstall previous version to Yes for Intune to send an Uninstall command.

• If you are using the supersedence to update an existing Win32 app, you can keep the Uninstall previous version set to No.

Note that when you set Uninstall previous version to No , Intune will Not Send an Uninstall command for app to be superseded. Thus, the installer of the superseding app must be able to update the selected app (which will be superseded) automatically.

You may also decide to take care of uninstallation of the previous app version using a custom script as the Install command for the superseding app. Or simply set the Uninstall previous version to Yes for Intune to send an Uninstall command.

Based on the way you set up the particular option, Intune determines the supersedence behavior as shown below.

Once you have the app created, make active assignment for the deployment and monitor the deployment status.

What End-Users Get To See

End-users get the normal Windows toast notification that the IME agent generates while processing app policies.

An example of Win32 app supersedence notification is shown below. Here supersedence is used to replace an installed Win32 app with another one.

Quick Look at the IME logs

As usual for debugging purposes, you will need to check the IntuneManagementExtension logs.

[Win32App][V2Processor] there is no app policy to process, return.        
[Win32App][V3Processor] Processing 1 subgraphs.
[Win32App][V3Processor] Processing subgraph with app ids:[App1_GUID], [App2_GUID]
[Win32App][ActionProcessor] Processor initializing. Detection and applicability checks will run for all apps in the subgraph. 

From what I have seen during my testing, the above IME entries signify that all the applications forming the graph (max up to 10 apps as permissible) have to pass the detection and applicability check.

Post the pre-install detection and applicability check, the IME entries will show you the below entries for the two types of supersedence.

• Supersedence type: Update

[Win32App][ActionProcessor] Found: 1 apps with intent to install: [App1_GUID].        
[Win32App][ActionProcessor] Found: 0 apps with intent to uninstall after enforcing installs: [].        
[Win32App][ActionProcessor] Evaluating install enforcement actions for app with id: [App1_GUID]
[Win32App][ActionProcessor] App to update with id: [App2_GUID] is detected.         

• Supersedence type: Replace

[Win32App][ActionProcessor] Found: 1 apps with intent to install: [App1_GUID].
[Win32App][ActionProcessor] Found: 1 apps with intent to uninstall after enforcing installs: [App2_GUID].
[Win32App][ActionProcessor] App to replace with id: [App2_GUID] is detected and will be uninstalled before installing replacing app with id: [App1_GUID]. 

Deleting Win32 apps forming a supersedence relation(s)

You cannot delete a Win32 app that has a supersedence set without removing the superseding relation(s).

You first need to ensure that the app does not forms any graph of apps and then you will be able to delete the app from the MEM Admin portal. Else you will get an error notifictaion like below.

Final Thoughts

App supersedence has been a feature available with SCCM for a long and with the 2102 service release, Win32 app supersedence finally makes its arrival in Intune.

I can see this feature addition adding real value, empowering MEM Admins and MEM IT Pros to better manage their Win32 app real-estate.

You might also want to take a look at the official MS documentation

• Understand app update versus app replacement within supersedence
• Understand in-place app update versus supersedence app update
• Basic Supersedence Examples
• Behavior for Chained Supersedence Scenarios
• Supersedence Limitations