How can companies manage their corporate User's Microsoft Accounts?
As the IT Manager for a small company the concept of "Microsoft Accounts" poses many issues for us.
We do not want our users using their personal Microsoft Accounts on our corporate devices (computers). Some users don't even have and do not want to create personal Microsoft Accounts just to use company Windows 8.x computers.
So the question is, how do companies manage this "Microsoft Account" that is required in Windows 8.x (needed to access Mail App, Calendar App, Windows Store, Windows 8.1 update, etc) ?
The issue also include;
1) how Windows Store App licenses are locked or linked to a specific Microsoft Account.
2) Windows Store App licenses are individual purchases, there is no way to buy corporate licenses for a Windows Store App and to apply this to all of the companies Windows 8.x computers
3) While in-house developed Windows Store Apps can be sideloaded to the corporate Windows 8.1 computers, there is not way to do this for Windows Store Apps.
4) To use many of the Windows Store Apps, you need to connect to a Microsoft Account.
5) how to allow use of Company approved Windows Store Apps while prohibiting other Apps a User may install.
6) OneDrive (of the Windows 8.x Windows Store Apps) might need to be disabled so that staff do not store corporate data on non-company managed storage.
The main solution that I see is that companies IT department must create Microsoft Accounts for each of their User IDs, using the email account of the company User ID. The IT department can then delete the Microsoft Account once they have left.However deleting the Microsoft Account would loose any Windows Store Apps that were purchased.
Another solution could be is to create "company role" based Microsoft Accounts, for example "Communications Officer", with the email alias of Communications.Office@mycompany.onmicrosoft.com (if you were using Office 365), and then purchasing software under this email address, and then whoever is the staff member who is working at the companies Communications Officer at the time would be given this email alias so that they can install and use the company purchased Windows Store Apps for this company role.
My current solution is to use Group Policy to make optional/disable the Microsoft Account, while still making the Windows Store Apps still available. However this does not address the issue of how to manage Microsoft Accounts for our staff.
Is there a better solution ? Will at some time Microsoft improve the implementation of Microsoft Accounts?
If you do not clearly understand my reasoning as explained above, please ask and I will attempt to explain further.
I have phoned Microsoft Technical Support however as they explained, this is not a technical fault, it is more of an issue in that Microsoft Accounts and the Windows Store has not been implemented in a way that can support Business users, its design only supports personal use, so they were unable to assist, and requested that I post this question here.
Sadly the whole idea of Microsoft Accounts seems to be for home/personal use, and not a business solution at all?
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