stringdist in RStudio (r3.4.4) vs AzureMLStudio (r3.1.0)

[BSMBen]

I'm having an issue with the output of the stringdist function when deploying as webservice to Azure ML Services. I think the issue may be that Azure is defaulting to R version 3.1.0. Is there a way to force the use of Microsoft Open R 3.2.2?

see code below