As I continue to prepare for Workplace Ninjas US 2025, I wanted to take a long look at one of our sponsors: Robopack. They make a very interesting product (in a very hot space) that simplifies the application deployment and updating process. Today, we’re good to take good look at the platform. We’ll cover:
- Overview of Robopack
- Packaging Apps with Robopack
- Deploying Robopack Instant Apps
- Using Robopack Custom App Settings to Elevate App Deployments
- Using Robopack Radar to Enhance App Management in Intune
- Using Robopatch to Simplify App Updates
- Final Thoughts
Overview of Robopack
Robopack is a very interesting product overall. The strategy is very simple:
“We hate deploying apps via Microsoft Intune, we hate updating apps via Intune, we hate discovering apps via Intune.”
Don’t forget, we also have sad SCCM admins that miss task sequences and the overall disjointed nature of applications!
We know the challenges around applications and that is nothing new. We often spend hours testing out applications, packaging them, creating them, fixing them, and more. Oh then, we get to update those applications and start that vicious cycle all over again. I covered much of this in an old article showing how Intune does apps compared to Workspace ONE.
Simply, Win32 Apps are the only good way to do things unless the application is available via WinGet. Pragmatic Intune Admins know that you can’t solve everything with Intune alone just like you need Nerdio to be truly effective with Azure Virtual Desktop. This is just the reality. There is really NO vendor to rule them all.
Robopack offers a number of really neat things:
- Instant App Deploys from Winget/Microsoft Store
- Scanning your entire app real estate both Intune managed and discovered apps
- Importing apps from SCCM
- Delivering app patch management just like Windows Autopatch
- Custom App Settings letting you drop registry keys, files, and execute scripts as part of your installs
- Easier app packaging for Win32 Apps
- Multi-tenant support (for your MSPs and people with test environments)
- Easily assign apps in your environment
If interested this is their current arc and what is coming in the first half of 2025:
So, the TL:DR is you can manage the entire application lifecycle of your Intune environment with much less effort than you do today. It’s an exciting product, which I am very happy to see shine at Workplace Ninjas US 2025. Check out my video below for a short demo:
Packaging Apps with Robopack
Packaging apps is pretty easy with Robopack. You have two main options:
- Instant Apps (which are similar to what you do when you deploy stuff via WinGet today)
- Building Packages (similar to what you do with deployment tools currently)
Building apps is as simple as pointing it at a folder and walking through the nice interface:
Note that you can select IntuneWin package, MSIX, or App-V packages based on your needs while is pretty cool.:
You can then set the information, detection rules, etc. One of the very cool things you will note is that it will actually analyze and test the package you deploy to confirm it ACTUALLY works vs. the chaos that ensues today:
Once that package builds, it’s very cool to see how much you can do with it. You drill into the application and can explore all sorts of things. For example, you can modify the package (where you can make changes to the things you set, and it will test and repackage it for you).
You can also look at the package documentation which is my favorite part. It reminds me a lot of the App Volumes app capture process from my VMware days. You can see the files, registry values, and even the install.log from when it tested the install:
When you watch the video below you will see how cool some of the GUI interactions are that educate people exactly as to what is happening:
Deploying Robopack Instant Apps
These capabilities are super simple and just awesome to work through. You start by searching for your app:
One of the things that makes it stand out is the ability to deploy an old version of an application. You can see with Slack you have the ability to just have it build with the latest version or you can import from a previous build if you want to:
You might ask, what is that “Robopatch Flow” thing? Well we’re going to cover that next!
The rest of the setup looks like when you package apps, just a bit simpler:
Using Robopack Custom App Settings to Elevate App Deployments
Today, we get a little crazy with our Win32 Apps. You might put files, and scripts, and installers, and God knows what else to get to your desired end result. It’s painful especially when you need to update something.
Custom App Settings is the solution to these problems. To start, you can decide whether to deploy something to ALL tenants or a single one, which is awesome.
Here are some of the things you can do with custom app settings:
- Replace/update install and uninstall commands
- Add registry values
- Add files
- Add scripts for install, post-install, pre-uninstall, uninstall, post-uninstall, pre-repair, repair, or post-repair.
You can also do fun things like specify apps to close, set a new signing certificate, or disable dependencies. I wasn’t really sure what the point of this was until I started digging into it. The ability to update a config file without having to spend hours repackaging an app is incredibly powerful. Custom App Settings themselves makes this product worth buying.
Enjoy the video demo below:
Using Robopack Radar to Enhance App Management in Intune
Robopack Radar is a very cool feature that is pretty new and overall, very cool. Since you connected a tenant already, you just need to click “Scan Intune with Radar”, which will show you all of the apps in your tenant (managed and just discovered)
Radar is essentially the gateway to Robopatch. First, you scan and then you can build flows, which work like Windows Autopatch rings to properly patch your managed apps.
You can also evaluate apps that have been discovered in your environment and bring them under management and automate their updates as well.
You will run into some apps that are not supported for updates, which means you need to upload them manually, which is totally okay:
Check out the video demo below, where we cover Radar live:
Using Robopatch to Simplify App Updates
So, let’s discuss patching apps.
There are two main components within Robopatch.
We start with Patch Groups, which let you group together a set of apps that are updated with your set of waves (think of those like patching rings). Robopatch has Entra integration letting you directly specify groups in Entra to assign to those rings:
The waves are also fairly granular putting the power in the hands of your Intune Admin, which I always love:
The second part of Robopatch are “Patch Flows”, which are an application workflow to keep apps up to date. You can see below, it’s fairly sensical and provides you with all of the information you need to be effective. It really is just that simple. You can manage apps even easier than managing Windows Updates via Autopatch:
Check out the video below to see Robopatch in action:
Final Thoughts
Well, this was fun. As far as products go, it was one of the easiest ones to rollout in a while. It also helps that the company has a ton of really good people including my friends Dean Ellerby and Andy Taylor who recently joined over there.
I think there are a few things that need to be improved (some of the UI stuff needs some clean-up like some of the dropdown menus), and I would love to see Radar pull existing assignments (letting you flip them over easier). Overall, it’s an excellent product and I think solves a few major issues that many Intune Admins have today around logistics of app deployments and trying to keep them updated without breaking the bank.
That’s all for today, and I hope people join us at Workplace Ninjas US 2025 in Dallas, TX in December AND at Workplace Ninjas UK 2025 in Edinburgh, Scotland in June where Robopack will be there among many great MVPs.
1 thought on “Robopack Elevates Microsoft Intune Application Lifecycle Management”
Just a slight correction (I hope markdown styling works here!)
“I wasn’t really sure what the point of this was until I started digging into it. The ability to update a config file without having to spend hours repackaging an app is incredibly powerful. ~~Custom App Settings themselves~~ **PSAppDeployToolkit** make**s** this product worth buying.”
You’re welcome 🙂