I was chatting to someone recently and they were in this scenario, so I’m writing it up. There are lots of guides out there on how to do this, but I found that many of them were a little outdated due to changes in the Microsoft Store for Business.

The scenario is you have recently connected Microsoft Store for Business but it never synchronised, the Last Sync date is always 01/01/1970 even though the status is Active.

Click Sync as many times as you want and it won’t synchronise. The problem is likely to be that you didn’t activate Intune as a management tool in Microsoft Store for Business.

To check and activate this, visit Microsoft Store for Business (https://businessstore.microsoft.com) with the appropriate administrative credentials. Select Manage from the menu options.

Now browse to Settings down the left side, then select Distribute

This could be the problem. Note the status of the Management tools in the list. In this case Microsoft Intune is Inactive. You may also have Microsoft Intune Enrollment as in the screenshot, you don’t necessarily need this active. To Activate these simply click the appropriate link beside the tool.
Also note that if your management tool isn’t listed at all, you have an option to Add Management tool which allows you to search for it.

Now observe that the Intune Management tool is marked as Active.

If we now visit Intune via the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center (https://endpoint.microsoft.com) again (Tenant Admin > Connectors and Tokens > Microsoft Store for Business) and click Sync. After a few minutes we should see the Last sync date change to the current time.

In turn, assuming you have approved some apps in Microsoft Store for Business, you should also see them appear in your apps list in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center.

Hopefully that helps someone.

/Peter