The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

We needed to have Access 2010 delivered through App-V on the same computers where Office 2010 Standard was published to. Office 2010 needs the Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V to activate, this was already up and running on our client computers.

If we streamed Access 2010 next to Office 2010 Standard, Access launched and asked for a Product Key:

I thought the Office Software Protection Platform must take action here, and contact our KMS Server to obtain a license, but it didn’t behave like that. The Office Software Protection Platform (osppsvc) service is responsible for the activation. This service is installed by the Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V.

After going through Technet and some forums, I finally got it all together and found the solution:

The KMS activation is done when installing the Deployment kit for App-V. To use Access 2010 and Office 2010 Standard together, the Deployment Kit for App-V needs to be installed with the STANDARD and ACCESS parameters combined. These Licensing Flags can be used on the command line separated by a space:

OffVirt.msi ACCESS=1 STANDARD=1 /qb REBOOT=REALLYSUPPRESS

To verify which actions the OffVirt.msi installer exactly did, use the logfile parameter and check the logs:

OffVirt.msi ACCESS=1 STANDARD=1 /qb REBOOT=REALLYSUPPRESS /l*v c:\temp\OffVirt.log

If the ACCESS=1 parameter wasn’t set, you’ll get this in the logfile;

MSI (s) (E0:E0) [17:11:35:989]: Skipping action: Access_KMS_Client (condition is false)

When you did set the ACCESS=1 licensing flag;

MSI (s) (40:58) [17:29:32:699]: Doing action: Access_KMS_Client

Going through the logs makes everything clear. Combining the OffVirt.msi parameters makes sense!

Many company’s choose to deploy Microsoft Office 2010 with the Windows 7 rollout, including mine. I will describe in short our Office 2010 deployment process in this post.

1. Create a network installation point

• Create a folder on a file server. For example: \\servername\sharename\office2010standard
• Copy the Office 2010 CD to that folder, this location becomes the network installation point (this approach differs from previous versions, such as Office 2003).
• Copy each language pack that you want from the source media to the installation point. When you are prompted to overwrite duplicate Setup files, click No.

2. Make a customization file with Office Customization Tool in Office 2010

• Start setup with the /admin parameter, to launch OCT (\\servername\sharename\office2010standard\setup.exe /Admin)
• Select your Office version, I choose Standard 32bit, or open a previous created msp file.

Setup

• Choose install location and company name.
• Setup licensing and user interface; we ‘re using a Key Management Server (KMS), we don’t like having users canceling the setup, we don’t like setup to display error messages and other dialog boxes that might interrupt the installation and we’re accepting the EULA automatically:

Features

• Modify user settings;
  • Disable Opt-in Wizard on first run: Enable (to disable the Wizard)
  • Enable customer experience improvenment program: Disable
  • Automatically receive small updates to improve reliability: Disable

• Language settings:

• Choose features you’d like to install.

Additional content

• We’re moving the shortcuts to another place in the Start Menu, it’s your choice to adapt this.

Outlook

• Outlook profile

• Add accounts

Save the customization file in de Updates folder: \\servername\sharename\office2010standard\Updates\yourFile.msp

3. Config.xml

Although some settings are already configured with OCT, this is my Config.xml file:

<Configuration Product=”Standard”>

  <Display Level=”basic” CompletionNotice=”no” SuppressModal=”No” AcceptEula=”Yes” />
  <Logging Type=”standard” Path=”C:\YourLogPath” Template=”Microsoft Office 2010 Standard Setup(*).txt” />
  <COMPANYNAME Value=”CompanyName” />
  <Setting Id=”SETUP_REBOOT” Value=”Never” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”match” ShellTransform=”Yes” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”en-us” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”nl-nl” />
  <AddLanguage Id=”fr-fr” />
  <LIS SOURCELIST=”\\servername\sharename\office2010standard” />
</Configuration>

Display

I like to immitate the /qb installation method, this can be done with this line:

<Display Level=”Basic” CompletionNotice=”No” SuppressModal=”No” AcceptEula=”Yes” />

Other options for Display Level are : None / Basic / Full

CompletionNotice set to None. To hide the setup end screen. Users don’t need this screen.

SuppressModal set to None, This way setup doesn’t display error messages and other dialog boxes that might interrupt the installation.

AcceptEula to accept the End User Licensing automatically.

Logging

We like to have some logging to troubleshoot install failures.

<Logging Type=”standard” Path=”C:\YourLogPath” Template=”Microsoft Office 2010 Standard Setup(*).txt” />

Setting – Reboot

To suppress a reboot after setup:

<Setting Id=”SETUP_REBOOT” Value=”Never” />

Setting – Suppress Activation using MAK actication

If you’re using a Multiple Activation Key (MAK) and you want to automatically (silent) activate Office 2010, add the following line to your config.xml. So users don’t get bothered with activation.

<Setting Id=”AUTO_ACTIVATE” Value=”1″ />

AddLanguage

A system engineer in a multilanguage environment needs to enable extra languages. Use the following lines to match the User Interface (Shell UI) language of the user’s Locale, and install some languages used in Belgium.

<AddLanguage Id=”match” />
<AddLanguage Id=”en-us” ShellTransform=”Yes” />
<AddLanguage Id=”nl-nl” />
<AddLanguage Id=”fr-fr” />

LIS Sourcelist

Add extra lines to the LIS Sourcelist if you’re having multiple fileservers holding the Office network installation point.

<LIS SOURCELIST=”\\servername\sharename\office2010standard” />

 

Hotfixes and patches

Hotfixes can be placed in the directory \Updates. These patches will be installed by setup during Office installation.

4. Deployment

Install Office with the /config parameter, pointing to the config.xml file.

\\servername\sharename\office2010standard\setup.exe” /config \\servername\sharename\office2010standard\Standard.WW\Config.xml”

 

Happy deploying!

Update: Integrate Service Pack 1 into the network installation point.

Recently I had a problem with my Windows 7 clients (built with my new and freshly created image) where they would not get activated by the KMS server. After some research I noticed that the KMS counter was not updated with new client and so my KMS server would never reach the point where it would actually start activating my clients (25 clients).

The reason for the KMS server not updating it’s counter was the fact that all my clients where reporting to the KMS server with the same Client Machine ID (CMID) which I noticed trough the events it reported in the Key Management Service event log of my KMS server.

If you ‘Bing’ on this one you will get lot’s of posts where this is due to the sysprep command which is not ran with the /generalize parameter. This parameter removes all hardware dependencies and when building a new client, it will create a new CMID.

However I did use the /generalize parameter so why do I get the same behavior. The solution is simple but it did take me some time to notice that  I seemed to have missed the <skiprearm> setting in my xml answer file. This setting should be removed before using the image in a production environment! If not you’ll end up rebuilding your image like me…

More info: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929829

Grtz,
Steve.

Last week I installed an Office 2010 KMS server. I had to install it on top of an existing Windows 7 KMS server. So I downloaded the Office 2010 KMS host license pack and activated the machine. No issues so far. After I installed Visio 2010 on my machine I saw that i had installed and activated a premium version.

Visio 2010 comes preinstalled with a Premium KMS client key. Remember to enter the appropriate KMS key as needed in your image. See also http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624357.aspx