Deploying Office 2007

with SCCM 2007

15/06/2006

Abstract

This document will describe how to deploy Office 2007 Professional using System Center

Configuration Manager 2007.

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Table of Contents Overview ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Preparing the SCCM Client ................................................................................................................. 5

Preparing Office 2007 ........................................................................................................................ 6

Configuring SMS ............................................................................................................................... 12

Creating an SMS Package ............................................................................................................... 12

Creating a Package Program .......................................................................................................... 15

Populating Distribution Points ....................................................................................................... 17

Distributing the SMS Package ........................................................................................................ 18

The Results ....................................................................................................................................... 23

Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 24

About 4sol ........................................................................................................................................ 25

The Company ................................................................................................................................. 25

Our People ..................................................................................................................................... 25

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Overview Microsoft Office is the primary application of 90% of all business desktops. Deploying and

managing this installation, and every other software installation, efficiently will save time and

effort for IT administrative task.

Microsoft Office 2007 will be released some time during the next 12 months. It would be

beneficial to know how to deploy it quickly and efficiently.

Ideally, all desktop applications will be virtualised using Softricity Desktop, offering new

deployment and management techniques. However, this is not an option for every organisation.

Microsoft will be releasing a successor to SMS 2003 and SMS 2003 R2 in 2007 called System

Center Configuration Manager 2007, formerly known as SMS V4. This document will describe a

likely scenario that administrators may face next year, i.e. how to deploy Microsoft Office

Professional 2007 using Microsoft SCCM 2007.

Microsoft SCCM 2007 is a solution for managing desktops, laptops, servers and Windows mobile

devices. It offers auditing, software management, reporting and security

configuration/management for the complete network.

Note: the process described in this document applies to all Microsoft Office desktop products, e.g.

Visio, Project, etc. This process is only valid for Volume License editions of the Microsoft Office

products.

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Preparing the SCCM Client The SCCM client will download any content into its local cache (C:\windows\system32\ccm\cache)

before carrying out an installation. Microsoft Office 2007 is a pretty large installation. The default

configuration for the local SCCM client cache is 256MB which is way too small. Make sure you

configure your SCCM client cache to be big enough to handle the content, e.g. 1024MB.

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Preparing Office 2007 Insert your Office 2003 CD and copy it onto a network share that your SMS server has read access

to. Make sure you have modify access. This is your SMS packages share.

Run SETUP.EXE /ADMIN to enable an administration installation. This is different to

administration installations of the past. The purpose of the /ADMIN command is to start up the

Office Customisation Wizard. This utility used to be part of the Office Resource Kit but is now built

into SETUP.EXE. The OCW will no longer create a MST or transform file. It now creates an MSP file

which is specified when running SETUP.EXE while installing the product.

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The Office Customisation Wizard starts up and asks if you want to edit an existing file or create a

new one. In this case, we need to create a new file.

You can specify where to install the Office product. You can also enter an organisation name.

Enter your volume license key. Make sure you have this correct or your installation will fail. You

must also accept the license agreement.

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The Display level is also important. For SMS deployments, set it to Basic or None. Setting it to

Full-Default will force the installer to prompt for an OK to begin the installation, something that is

undesired in an unattended and silent installation. Leaving it with Basic and Completion Notice is

handy for running manual installations for debugging via a manual installation.

Modify User Settings enables you to pre-configure Microsoft Office Professional. It will be

important for early adopters of Microsoft Office 2007 to know that it saves in a new XML based

file format by default, e.g. a Word 2007 document uses .DOCX. This new format is incompatible

with previous versions of Microsoft Office. You may want to pre-configure Microsoft Office to

save as Office 97-2003 compatible format. This can be done here.

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Set Features Installations States enables you to decide what components of Microsoft Office to

install. The good news here is that The Office Assistant, aka Clippy, does not exist anymore.

You can now add, edit or remove shortcuts for Microsoft Office.

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The last section of the OCW enables you to pre-configure Microsoft Outlook 2007. You can set up

a profile, set up a connection to a server, enable caching mode, set up offline storage, etc.

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Once you are happy, you can save the configuration as an .MSP file in your network copy of the

Office 2003 installation, i.e. your SMS packages share.

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Configuring SMS

Creating an SMS Package This is your SMS packages share as it appears on the SMS server. In my case, I have placed this

share on my primary SMS server. Note how I have organised the folders and placed my package in

a “Build” folder with a version. You will likely have many applications and each will possibly have

several versions depending on packaging success. It is important to keep these for the ability to

test and rollback.

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Below is the SMS packages share as it appears over the network. Note the SETUP.EXE and my MSP

file for my standard desktop installation.

We are now ready to build a package in SCCM 2007 from the files and folders in the package share.

Note how I have mimicked my folder configuration from the package share in the Packages and

Advertisements containers in the SCCM 2007 administration console.

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Right click on the 2007 folder and choose to create a new package. Describe the package as

required.

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This package will contain source files to deploy so select the “This Package Contains Source Files”

tick box. I normally use a compressed copy of the source folders but I also like to set the source

directory. This will enable me to quickly choose to “always obtain files from source directory”.

This is handy in case I decide to patch my current build of Microsoft Office 2007. However, it is

more likely that I will have to alter my MSP file in OCW. Using the “always obtain” option during

testing means that I don’t have to recreate the package after I change my MSP file.

I finish the wizard to create the package.

Creating a Package Program Now it’s time to create a program to execute against the package, i.e. tell SMS how to install the

package or even uninstall it. I’ll normally deploy Office per machine and without a user being

installed. I’ve named my program appropriately.

The command line option is the actual command that will install Microsoft Office 2007. SETUP.EXE

can be typed or browsed for inside of the package. The full command, SETUP.EXE /ADMINFILE

STANDARD.MSP, will tell SETUP.EXE to perform a customised installation according to the

specifications I have put in the listed MSP file.

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We have a choice of whether to reboot the PC or not. I prefer to let SMS to install the computer.

This will present the user with some notification and a 5 minute timer. However, I have come

across an installer that would break if SMS did the reboot instead of it. Microsoft Office 2007 does

not require a reboot.

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We have the ability, beyond SCCM collections, to prevent accidental targeting of computers. This

will ensure that Operating System, Service Pack level and memory requirements are all met before

an installation commences. The Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 release is listed as supporting

Windows 2003 and Windows XP SP2 with a minimum of 2GB disk space free.

We can now specify under what conditions that Microsoft Office 2007 will be installed. For a new

deployment it doesn’t matter if a user is logged in or not. But for an upgrade, it would be best to

ensure that previous versions of Office are not running or else the installation of Microsoft Office

2007 may fail. The best way to accomplish this is to ensure that users are not logged in.

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Microsoft Office 2007 should be installed with administrative rights. A normal installation will not

require the usage of the Software Installation Account. You would probably only need to use this

to copy down files from a network folder requiring domain authentication of a user.

Complete the wizard. No further customisations will probably be required. The last tab does offer support for installations onto servers that are monitored by MOM2005 or System Center Operations Manager 2007. You can choose to disable agent monitoring of the host and raise an alert if the installation has failed. This would be very useful to avoid noise and to get an alert if Terminal Servers or application servers will have problems after a failed deployment.

Populating Distribution Points This is an important step in a multi-site SCCM deployment with many site servers. You should

ensure that you have configured the package with a schedule to populate the distribution points

to avoid swamping limited WAN links.

SCCM 2007 offers a new type of distribution point called the Branch Distribution Point. It is

intended to be used in small branches. It doesn’t even require a secondary site server; it can be

installed on a Windows XP Professional computer. This would be limited to 10 simultaneous

connections due to Windows desktop operating system licensing limitations. A BDP should only

be used in small to medium sites. A secondary site server offers traffic optimisation for client

connections and reporting that cannot be obtained by using a BDP.

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In my situation, I have only got a single primary site server. I have populated the DP and wait for it

to successfully “install”, to use SCCM and SMS parlance.

Distributing the SMS Package A software distribution consists of 3 components:

• A Collection: who to distribute to.

• A Package: What to distribute.

• An Advertisement: How and when to distribute by linking the collection to the package

with a schedule.

I have taken a short cut by navigating to the package program “Per-System Unattended”. I right

clicked on it and selected “Distribute – Software”. This launched a partially pre-populated wizard

for me to create an advertisement.

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In this example, I am distributing Microsoft Office 2007 to all members of a collection called “Pilot

Group”.

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I gave the advertisement a meaningful name. It is good to list the collection and the package in

some way.

We now specify when the advertisement will be available for SCCM 2007 clients to access. This is

not the installation schedule. This is the date and time when SCCM 2007 clients will start to

download the policy and the source files for the package from the DP.

I like to have this happen well before the scheduled release date or installation date of the

software. This will enable all clients to pre-download the content and will even enable roaming

users to have the software installed even if they are away from the network on the installation

date.

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Once an advertisement is downloaded as a policy to an SCCM client and the content is

downloaded, it will wait to run the package program. The program will run either when it is

executed by a user from Control Panel or when another scheduled date and time are reached.

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We can now specify when to make the advertisement mandatory. Making an advertisement

mandatory will force it to execute the package program. The schedule can be a repeating one if

required. In my example, I am using a simple schedule to force an installation several days after

the advertisement becomes live. This will give a decent window for as many clients as possible to

download the package content. Users with downloaded content may choose to pre-empt the

mandatory installation by running the package program from Control Panel.

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The Results Once the advertisement is live, you should start to monitor its status. Below is a nice report to get,

a client has successfully gone through each step in a sample deployment:

• Accepted: The advertisement was downloaded as a machine policy.

• Waiting: The content was downloading.

• Running: The package program started to run.

• Succeeded: The installation was completed and the user can now run Microsoft Office

2007 Professional.

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Summary Microsoft Office 2007 Professional can take a long time to deploy manually. By making use of the

available tools, i.e. the Office Customisation Wizard, and System Center Configuration Manager

you can quickly deploy fresh or upgrade installations of Microsoft Office 2007 Professional with a

zero-touch deployment and with the ability to monitor and report on your success.

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About 4sol

The Company

Delivering integrated technology solutions that will provide a rapid return on your

investment.

4sol was founded by three directors with a wealth of experience in the IT and business consulting

arena. Helping to design and project manage for some of the world’s largest corporates has

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We offer a unique approach built around our own project management methodology utilizing our

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Framework (MSF) and further enhanced by our experience in the deployment of infrastructure

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allowing us to provide sound systems analysis and to recommend long term cost effective solutions.

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