Forum Discussion
Offline installation of the packaging tool
The Microsoft Store for Business web portal allows you to download the package and distribute within your enterprise. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/distribute-offline-apps
John Vintzel
Program Manager Lead, MSIX
John, it doesn't. There is no option within Store for Business to get this app and make it available Offline.
Perhaps you could provide the steps, if you believe it should be available as you describe.
If you add the app to your Store for Business catalog: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/apps-in-microsoft-store-for-business (make sure you select offline license)
Then you can download the app package: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/distribute-offline-apps
John.
So first we have to set up Store For Business? The point was to install it without the store.
Johan Nilsson We also offer a Quick Create VM in Hyper-V. It provides a eval version of Windows 10 1809 and the MSIX Packaging Tool preinstalled.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/packaging-tool/quick-create-vm
John.
jvintzel Yep, thats the way I do it now, pretty cool but quite a few steps to set it up every time. Doesnt look like we cant save snapshots of the QC VM.
Johan Nilsson While I would like to see Microsoft make this easier, I can attest that it is at least possible. End-user's don't need to use the Store for Business/Education, but to deploy the packaging tool currently someone at IT does, and you can kindof figure out how to do it from the links (which are pretty generic so you have to wade through a lot). It is more work than the fiddler trick, but I don't think that trick works any more anyway.
The key to make this work for me was to understand that even though the store app is free, there still is a license. So after you add it to the Store for Business/Education and download the contents once, you'll have an appxbundle file and a dot bin file. The dotbin file is the license file. So gather them both and using add-appxprovisionedpackage for offline with the bin file as the license (alternatively you can invoke dism directly instead).
