ConfigMgr 1511 – Enabling the New Software Center
ConfigMgr 1511 comes with a new version of Software Center. There are several advantages to this new version. First, it will now show both user and device deployments, meaning that your clients no longer need to go to the Application Catalog webpage. Second, it no longer requires Silverlight, which Microsoft deprecated earlier this year.
Enabling New Software Center
You must enable the new Software Center. To do this, open up your client settings by going to Administration > Client Settings. This is a device setting, so select the appropriate settings package. Now, under Computer Agent, find the option that says “Use new Software Center” and set it to “Yes”.
That’s it. Once your devices update to the latest version of the SCCM client (5.00.8325.1000 or later), this policy will take over. One important note: if you have shortcuts defined anywhere for an old version of Software Center (one that points to C:\Windows\CCM\SCClient.exe), this shortcut will still open the old version of Software Center. If these shortcuts are required, I would suggest recreating them as files pushed by SCCM or Group Policy.
Application Catalog
Both of the Application Catalog roles are still required to be installed in your environment. Users can also still access the traditional Application Catalog by going to the Installation Status section of the new Software Center. The same link is still there:
This link will only function if you set the “Default Application Catalog website point” option in the screenshot above.
No More Silverlight
As I mentioned above, this new version of Software Center no longer requires that you have Silverlight installed on your machines. To exclude it from being installed, use this parameter anywhere you install the client:
/skipprereq:silverlight.exe
This is a ccmsetup.exe parameter and not an MSI parameter. It can be added to your task sequences like this:
