Office 2007/B2 Group Policy Installation

Anyone have a solution for those of us who's volume license is for Prof plus,
not enterprise?


--
Fredrick A. Zilz
Director IT
InterHealth N.I.


"Danny" wrote:

Hi,
I said I'd write back when I had the answer and I've got it! You need the
Office Enterprise 2007 edition in order to use GPO to deploy office 2007. If
you have a volume license agreement you can download it now from
licensing.microsoft.com. I have, and i've tested it and it work. It is as
easy as they make out, the problem was that Technet were shipping the ProPlus
version, even though they said they were shipping enterprise, which was why
it wasn't working. Rock on Mircosoft!!!
Hope you have similar experiences! Good luck.

"Michael" wrote:

I suspect they may force us to use BDD for deployment. I hope not. I've
worked somewhat with the BDD beta and Vista but not Office 2007 yet. It is a
much more complicated path.

Michael

"Danny" wrote:

Hi,
At last I have found someone with the same problem as me. I would love to
be able to give you the answer, but as yet I don't have one. I have loads of
experience of deploying Office 2000/XP and 2003, all of which seemed really
easy in comparison to 2007, although Microsoft (and I do love them) suggest
this is the easiest yet! The idea of adding an .MSP file to the updates
folder is brilliant, but as soon as you do I get the exact same error message
that you get. If you then attempt to modify the XML file, well, you need a
degree in coding to get your head round that way. If this is a bug, it's a
very stupid one as it's holding up the end using testing of the product, if
you can't deploy it, you can't use it. GREAT.
I have been working on and off this since the release of Beta2 and cannot
find any useful information on this error anywhere. I have ask the Online
Concierge Chat in TechNet and have Googled every combination I can think of.
I'm with you budy, it's NOT you. If I ever find the answer, i'll be back!

PS: Clarification of the error: Only happens after you add the .MSP file to
the update folder. Office 2007 deploys a treat with no modifications in the
update folder, but then your end users / testers must add the PIDKEY and
activate it and install all the other options they need. Not great! SOMEONE
HELP!

"Michael" wrote:

I never resolved this issue. After wasting far too much time on it, I
abandoned it. I decided I would not test it in a domain environment until
they work out this issue or tell us what we're doing wrong.

Michael

"GrahamR" wrote:

Hi Michael/Bob

I too have had this issue. Having gone through everything in the resoure
kit which I downloaded from Microsoft I get this error when attepting to add
the proww.msi as a new package in a policy assigned to a workstation.

Having copied the contents of the appropraite folder from my Technet Plus
DVD of office 2007 Beta 2 to a installation point on my server I have run the
Office customization tool which has then saved the msp file to the update
folder. Then according to documentation I should then be able to assign the
proww.msi as a new package in a group policy. After selecting the MSI in the
file requester dialog you then get to choose whether you just want to assign
the package or click advanced. Choosing either of these options presents the
message same message documented about being unable to extract the deployment
information.

I have using GPMMC on my xp workstation as well as on a 2003 server. Same
thing.

I have not touched the config.xml as from what I read in the deployment
documents this will only overwrite what is in the msp file.

Any thoughts Bob?

"Michael" wrote:

Here's where the instructions are at:
http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/t...797111033.aspx. I've
attempted the "To Deploy with Group Policy" section. That's when I get the
error: "Add operation failed. Unable to
extract deployment information from the package. Run validation on the
package to ensure the package is correct."

I've got quite a bit of experience deploying applications in this manner as
well as writing my own installation packages for commercial applications. I
don't think I'm making some trivial mistake. However, I don't really have
time to dig into their installer package to determine why things aren't
working. I was hoping someone has already attempted this and figured it out.

Thanks,
Michael

Yeah, hi, I do. I was a little over eger in my last post, and hadn't fully
tested the deployment. I have since discovered that any custom .MSP files
that you create using the OCT (Office Customisation Tool) do not get applied,
to any version of Office 2007, when deployed via Group Policy. This is a
little strange and rather anoying, as it seems there is no GUI customisation
tool available for enterprise deployment users. I'll confess to not reading
the instructions properly first time round, if you follow this link and ready
it carfully...

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office....mspx?mfr=true

....it does say, that MSPs created via the OCT do not get applied during GPO
deployment, and this is a disadvantage of this deployment process. GREAT!!!

You must now configure the config.xml file in the
Office2007Version.WW\Config.XML. It lists the options that are available to
be changed/customised and gives links to further information. I havn't
tested this fully yet, but seems to answer the initial question posted here.

I hope for all our sakes that the config.xml route works. If you have any
further problems, post back and i'll see if I can help.

All the best,
Daniel

PS: It would be really useful if Microsoft produced an updated Office
Resource Kit that allows you to create MST files, but as yet I haven't seen
one.


"Fred Zilz" wrote:

Anyone have a solution for those of us who's volume license is for Prof plus,
not enterprise?


--
Fredrick A. Zilz
Director IT
InterHealth N.I.


"Danny" wrote:

Hi,
I said I'd write back when I had the answer and I've got it! You need the
Office Enterprise 2007 edition in order to use GPO to deploy office 2007. If
you have a volume license agreement you can download it now from
licensing.microsoft.com. I have, and i've tested it and it work. It is as
easy as they make out, the problem was that Technet were shipping the ProPlus
version, even though they said they were shipping enterprise, which was why
it wasn't working. Rock on Mircosoft!!!
Hope you have similar experiences! Good luck.

"Michael" wrote:

I suspect they may force us to use BDD for deployment. I hope not. I've
worked somewhat with the BDD beta and Vista but not Office 2007 yet. It is a
much more complicated path.

Michael

"Danny" wrote:

Hi,
At last I have found someone with the same problem as me. I would love to
be able to give you the answer, but as yet I don't have one. I have loads of
experience of deploying Office 2000/XP and 2003, all of which seemed really
easy in comparison to 2007, although Microsoft (and I do love them) suggest
this is the easiest yet! The idea of adding an .MSP file to the updates
folder is brilliant, but as soon as you do I get the exact same error message
that you get. If you then attempt to modify the XML file, well, you need a
degree in coding to get your head round that way. If this is a bug, it's a
very stupid one as it's holding up the end using testing of the product, if
you can't deploy it, you can't use it. GREAT.
I have been working on and off this since the release of Beta2 and cannot
find any useful information on this error anywhere. I have ask the Online
Concierge Chat in TechNet and have Googled every combination I can think of.
I'm with you budy, it's NOT you. If I ever find the answer, i'll be back!

PS: Clarification of the error: Only happens after you add the .MSP file to
the update folder. Office 2007 deploys a treat with no modifications in the
update folder, but then your end users / testers must add the PIDKEY and
activate it and install all the other options they need. Not great! SOMEONE
HELP!

"Michael" wrote:

I never resolved this issue. After wasting far too much time on it, I
abandoned it. I decided I would not test it in a domain environment until
they work out this issue or tell us what we're doing wrong.

Michael

"GrahamR" wrote:

Hi Michael/Bob

I too have had this issue. Having gone through everything in the resoure
kit which I downloaded from Microsoft I get this error when attepting to add
the proww.msi as a new package in a policy assigned to a workstation.

Having copied the contents of the appropraite folder from my Technet Plus
DVD of office 2007 Beta 2 to a installation point on my server I have run the
Office customization tool which has then saved the msp file to the update
folder. Then according to documentation I should then be able to assign the
proww.msi as a new package in a group policy. After selecting the MSI in the
file requester dialog you then get to choose whether you just want to assign
the package or click advanced. Choosing either of these options presents the
message same message documented about being unable to extract the deployment
information.

I have using GPMMC on my xp workstation as well as on a 2003 server. Same
thing.

I have not touched the config.xml as from what I read in the deployment
documents this will only overwrite what is in the msp file.

Any thoughts Bob?

"Michael" wrote:

Here's where the instructions are at:
http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/t...797111033.aspx. I've
attempted the "To Deploy with Group Policy" section. That's when I get the
error: "Add operation failed. Unable to
extract deployment information from the package. Run validation on the
package to ensure the package is correct."

I've got quite a bit of experience deploying applications in this manner as
well as writing my own installation packages for commercial applications. I
don't think I'm making some trivial mistake. However, I don't really have
time to dig into their installer package to determine why things aren't
working. I was hoping someone has already attempted this and figured it out.

Thanks,
Michael

Hey I got this error as well after playing with the config.xml file. I
found that having the setupupdates element or any other elements the
MSI does not like caused this error for our deployment. I ended up
stripping the config.xml to a bare minumum of product key, company and
it worked fine. I was trying to get the config.xml to site the custom
.MSP file I had made to no avail so I had to remove that element to get
rid of the error.

Hope this helps someone else.

Thanks,

Michael


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