System Management

Besides using Software Distribution to install software, you can do this using a Task Sequence too. This can be done during and Operating System Deployment process or not.

Usually, I install software during an OSD. For this, you must have a package for that software product (of course) and at least one program that runs silently. If the program  requires user intervention, you will not have the possibility to add it to your TS. I hope you know the fact that the package should exist on a Distribution Point.

This is how one of my simplest TSs looks like:

To add an Install Software step, in your TS click Add from the menu and select General – Install Software.

Then, type a name for this step and using the Browse button select a package to add the TS. Remember that you can only add packages that has a program to run without user intervention.

I find it useful to have a step to install latest updates after all install software steps.

One more way to install software using a TS, is to have only Install Software steps. This way, you can install multiple software products using one advertisement instead of advertising every package. I use this only when I have an OS installed and I want to install software on it.

This is how such a TS looks like:

Receiving some complaints that users can’t find the Open, New etc. commands in the new Office 2007 interface, I had a task to customize Quick Access Toolbar so that all users can have these commands installed by default.

Office 2007 applications (Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word) use a Quick Access Toolbar setting file (.qat). Every application has its own .qat file (Access.qat, Excel,qat, Outlook.qat, PowerPoint.qat and Word.qat). In order to customize and deploy these files using Office Customization Tool, we must add a registry entry to enable roaming user profiles to access the .qat file during deployment. This is because, by default, qat files are not saved in a roaming location.

I did this using the OCT:

1. Open or create a new setup customization file (.msp) for Microsoft Office 2007.
2. Under Additional content, select Add registry entries and click Add.
3. Select HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the “Root” select box.
4. Select REG_DWORD in the “Data type” select box.
5. Enter Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars in the “Key” input box.
6. Enter QuickAccessToolbarRoaming as a “Value name”.
7. Enter 1 as a “Value data”.
   
8. Click OK.

After this, the default folder for .qat files will be: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Office.

Now log in to any computer that has this modification and customize the Quick Access Toolbar for every Office 2007 application as you want. When you’re done, navigate to “%appdata%\Microsoft\Office” folder and copy all .qat files from there to a USB media for example.

Now you have two methods of distributing these files: copy these files to all computers manually/using a script or use OCT. It depends on your needs… I will use OCT to have these files copied during the installation of Office 2007.

To do this, open the same office customization file (.msp) as earlier and do the following modifications:

1. Under Additional content, select Add files and click Add.
2. In the Add Files to MSP File dialog box, open the folder that contains your *.qat files, select the Excel.qat file (for example) and then click Add.
3. In the File Destination Path dialog box, select the path [AppDataFolder]\Microsoft\Office for the “Destination path on the user’s computer”.
   
4. Click OK.

Next time when you will install Office 2007, Quick Access Toolbar in every application will have the commands you set. In my case, Excel’s Quick Access Toolbar looks like this:

Having to create a package with McAfee ePO agent, I wanted to make it available to task sequence too so it can be installed during the operating system setup. For this, I had to make it install unattended or silent not requiring any user input. As I have never worked with McAfee, first, I did not understand what the purpose of this agent is. I couldn’t understand why you should install the agent and not the antivirus software itself? When I did, I started to think how to deploy it easily and with no user interaction.

So, to do this, simply put FramePkg.exe into a folder, say “ePO”, and create a package as you normally would. Then create a program that has the following command line FramePkg.exe /install = agent /silent.

If you want to install ePO as part of one task sequence, make sure the program can run whether or not a user is logged on and do not allow users to interact with the program.

This way, after the computer is added to domain it will connect to the server and will receive all necessary settings (for example install antivirus software, patches and latest definition updates).

As Microsoft recently released Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 suite, it is a good idea to add the update files to the package so it it can be deploy during the installation.

So, first of all we have to download the SP2 executable file from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5&displaylang=en (see additional information bellow).

Then, using a command prompt window, extract the content of the package to a folder you can browse to.

Accept EULA and click Continue.

Select a folder to extract the files to.

When the extraction is complete, you should have the following files:

At this point, you can delete the office2007sp2-kb953195-fullfile-en-us.exe file. Copy the other 9 files to “Updates” folder from your Office 2007 source folder.

Now you only have to update the distribution point/s and the next time Office 2007 will install, it will apply the SP2 update during Office 2007 installation.

Additional Info:

The same steps are valid for Visio and Project 2007.

Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=78E36742-8BDA-471E-88E6-9B561BB06258&displaylang=en.
Microsoft Office Project 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c126fa4a-b43f-4f7e-a9d4-522e92a6cfee.

Let’s suppose you create a package with one program and want to advertise it only to a few selected platforms, including x86 and x64 Windows 7 systems. Because Windows 7 is not supported yet with Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, you cannot choose it from the supplied list of platforms. As a result of this, after receiving and downloading the package, the system will give you the following message:
Program rejected (wrong platform). Advertisement "XYZ12345" from site "XYZ" was rejected because the client's platform is not supported.

It is expected that SP2 will add support for Windows 7, but until then we can use the following workaround:

1. Create a collection with all Windows 7 systems
   select sms_r_system.ResourceID, sms_r_system.ResourceType, sms_r_system.Name, sms_r_system.SMSUniqueIdentifier, sms_r_system.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, sms_r_system.Client from sms_r_system where OperatingSystemNameandVersion like '%Workstation 6.1%'
2. Create a new program (for example Program for Win7) for the same package and select “This program can run on any platform” as a requirement.
3. Create a new advertisement and use “Program for Win7” program. Advertise it to Windows 7 collection created earlier.

That’s it. This may not be the best workaround, but it worked very well for me, at least until SP2 will RTM and I can install it in production.