Office 2007 Professional Plus Deployemtn testing problems

[Richard Barber]

Right this is rapidly becoming a nightmare and any reason for installing
Office 2007 for improved manageability is rapidly decreasing.

I am currently evaluating Office 2007, judging by our requirements Prof Plus
looks to be the right fit so I decide to do some quick and dirty application
compatibility testing.

Download the Prof Plus from Technet Direct. Trying to install Professional
Plus looking at the Microsoft documentation it says use the OCT
tool...fine..after about an hour with no joy and further searching it states
that the OCT is only valid for people with Enterprise WOAH!!
OK...never mind.....Enterprise has way too much in it that we don't need so
what are the alternatives? We are a small house but with a highly managed
environment...so lets look at pushing it out via GPO.

Set-up up my config.xml files attempt to add ProPlusrWW.msi to a Group
Policy and get an error message "Add operation failed. Unable to extract
deployment information from the package. Run validation on the package to
ensure that the package is correct."
Further reading finds that Microsoft don't want you to use GPO anymore so
where does that leave us?

I guess the question is has anybody come across these issues and have they
solved them?
And if at all possible not use scripts! GPO was meant to be a way of getting
away from scripts!

 

[Garth]

The OCT tool is included with Profeessional Plus, just run setup /admin.
However it is far from bug free.

Regards, Garth

 

[Richard Barber]

Hello Garth

Thanks for the response.

Hmmm, Thats very strange as I originally tried to use the admin switch and
it didn't like it ("Files necessary to run the Office Customization Tool were
not found. Run Setup from the installation point of a qualifying product.")
Looking at my Prof Plus install (on the network and on the original CD image)
and neither seem to have the Admin folder which holds the OCT Tools.
It seems that the image of Prof Plus on Technet Downloads doesn't have all
the necessary file to do full deployment testing, which is, frankly, a bit
pants.

I'm also having problems with the config.xml file. If I put in anything with
a OptionsStateID of "Default" or "Local" it doesn't like it (with or without
the children="force" option) and halts with an error (looking at the logs
generated it seems that Default or Local are "invalid data".

Seems that Setup on the Technet images might be a bit buggy fullstop!

As for the OCT being buggy..It looks like I still have all THAT fun to come!
)

Best Regards

R.

 

[GrahamR]

I had the problem with extracting deployment information when I was testing
the beta version of office 2007. I was unable to fix it at the time. I have
just had the same error message when trying to deploy the Pro Plus.

This time however, there was a little more help in the Application error log
on the server (the one I was using to set the GPO up). It would appear that
I made a mistake with one of the OptionState lines in the config.xml file.
It said that I had a missing ID attribute. When I looked the only thing I
could see that I had done was put ID instead of Id in the config.xml file.
Once corrected the package allocated ok in the GPO.

From this I can only discern that perhaps the entries are case sensitive in
config.xml.

For this installation I just copied the media to a network location. I did
not use the /admin switch as I had read that none of this works when
deploying through GPO.

I'm still in the middle of testing the worsktation that I allocated it to.
One of the things I did do was unallocate office 2003 from the policy before
allocating 2007 rather than seting up the upgrade information. When I did
this I get an application error mid way through the install of which others
seem to be getting which relates, I believe, to the uninstallation of 2003.

Once reset again the installation seems to complete on the workstation and
then when logging on the installation completes for the user.

One of the things I will do is use the upgrade options in the Group Policy
for Office 2007 to see if this resolves the issue. The document (book) I
downloaded today from Microsoft from the 2007 resource kit seems to suggest
this is the preferred method to upgrade and states that the process will
uninstall 2003 before installing 2007. The document is new, it would appear
to be publish in March 2007. Helpful for me was the list of optionstate
values usable and also where to see them (setup.xml).

URL
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Offic...8622-4317-b21d-1aa5f72e15bf1033.mspx?mfr=true

Regards

Graham

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Graham,

There's a series of 5 or so downloadable book sections of the Office 2007 Resource Kit(ORK2007) available now through
http://microsoft.com/office/ork (the table of contents page on the left of the URL you provided before will show them when expanded)
as well as some updates to the online ORK content.

The section on GPO deployment (09Mar07) is at
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/8309f67f-8622-4317-b21d-1aa5f72e15bf1033.mspx

and is a bit more complete than before.

================
I had the problem with extracting deployment information when I was testing
the beta version of office 2007. I was unable to fix it at the time. I have
just had the same error message when trying to deploy the Pro Plus.

This time however, there was a little more help in the Application error log
on the server (the one I was using to set the GPO up). It would appear that
I made a mistake with one of the OptionState lines in the config.xml file.
It said that I had a missing ID attribute. When I looked the only thing I
could see that I had done was put ID instead of Id in the config.xml file.
Once corrected the package allocated ok in the GPO.

From this I can only discern that perhaps the entries are case sensitive in
config.xml.

For this installation I just copied the media to a network location. I did
not use the /admin switch as I had read that none of this works when
deploying through GPO.

I'm still in the middle of testing the worsktation that I allocated it to.
One of the things I did do was unallocate office 2003 from the policy before
allocating 2007 rather than seting up the upgrade information. When I did
this I get an application error mid way through the install of which others
seem to be getting which relates, I believe, to the uninstallation of 2003.

Once reset again the installation seems to complete on the workstation and
then when logging on the installation completes for the user.

One of the things I will do is use the upgrade options in the Group Policy
for Office 2007 to see if this resolves the issue. The document (book) I
downloaded today from Microsoft from the 2007 resource kit seems to suggest
this is the preferred method to upgrade and states that the process will
uninstall 2003 before installing 2007. The document is new, it would appear
to be publish in March 2007. Helpful for me was the list of optionstate
values usable and also where to see them (setup.xml).

URL
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Offic...8622-4317-b21d-1aa5f72e15bf1033.mspx?mfr=true

Regards

Graham>>
--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[Richard Barber]

Thank you for the replies. I have had a few we'll deserved days off from
struggling with Office 2007 deployment.

I'll have another look at the config.xml file just to make sure that I
haven't been a complete dufus.

I'll be upgrading from Office 2000 in the production environment but wanted
to get my head straight about the actual installation switches and options of
Office 2007.

I'll spend some more time looking through the suggested books and trying to
get at least a sucessful straight install before looking at upgrade scenarios.

I'll post back any results.

Best Regards

Richard.

 

[Richard Barber]

Right. Got to the cause of our install problems, it WAS a problem with the
Config.xml (thanks Graham) but I'm not sure weather it is a problem with the
installer, Microsoft documentation or my brain (probably a combination of the
latter two).

The problem was that I was using the State Id of "Default" for the products
I wished to install - thinking that this would install the specified products
and their children in the Microsoft "Default" installation selections (i.e.
install to My Computer, install on first use etc. etc. etc.) This, it
appears, is not the case (although it isn't particularly clear from the
documentation what Default is for. In the documentation

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Offic...8622-4317-b21d-1aa5f72e15bf1033.mspx?mfr=true
It states:

Default returns the feature or sub-feature to its default state.

So is this Default installation state for reseting existing, installed
products to their default state on re-installs? Because it certainly doesn't
work the way that I thought on initial installs using GPO as it crashes with:

Product: Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 -- Error 25004. Invalid
value specified for OptionState State attribute: Default

As soon as I change the State Id's to Local it allows the attachment of the
installation package to the GPO.

Onwards with upgrade testing!

Best Regards

Richard.