Augusto Alvarez

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part II

January 31, 2009 at 8:55 pm | Posted in Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), Windows 7 | 12 Comments
Tags: Image Deployment, Windows 7, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010

On the first post of this series, we’ve managed to install MDT 2010 and its requirements, prepare distribution share and task sequence, add Windows 7 image to use it as reference and create the deployment point. We are now going to add Office 2007 as an application to be deployed included in the OS image and complete the environment to generate the reference image.

The process of adding an application like Office 2007 it is quite simple, the only trick is to get the application to install silently (or unattended) without requiring for user intervention , we’ll see how that works.

Adding Applications to MDT 2010: Office 2007

We’ll add the application using also a simple wizard, but the interesting part comes when you get the chance to modify default settings on the Office 2007 package:

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Distribution Share” > “Applications” > “New”.

2. Select “Application with source files”.

3. Complete the data about the application.

4. Select the “Source Directory”. Since I have it on the hard drive, I’ll check “Move the files to the distribution share instead of copying them”.

5. Keep the directory name as suggested: “Microsoft Office 2007”.

6. On “Command Details” introduce the name of the executable for Office 2007: “setup.exe” and click on “Finish”. We’ll add the special arguments to achieve silent installations in next steps.

With that performed the Office 2007 is added as an application in Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. MDT also detects automatically the options available for Office products, this way we can modify them in a simple way.

Office 2007: Silent and personalized installation

To achieve this, we are going to use the mentioned feature of MDT to generate a “Config.xml” file that is used for personalizing installations of Office 2007. This XML is a very flexible option that we can modify according to our needs and generate ourselves custom and unattended Office suite installations.

1. Access the Application Properties from the “Deployment Workbench” console. And get to the “Office Products” tab.

2.  Now we are going to select the following options:

Office 2007 Product to Install: Enterprise (this is the version that I’m using).
Office 2007 Languages: en-us.
Product Key: If applies, select your PID.
Customer Name: Augusto Alvarez
Display Level: None. This will generate the silent installation.
Accept EULA: Checked.

3. Click on “Apply”.

This will generate the XML file that you can check it clicking on “Edit Config.xml”. You should see something like this (notice that the first section it’s just a sample):

You can check also on “Details” tab that “setup.exe” command line has been modified to use the recently generated XML: “setup.exe /config Enterprise.WW\config.xml” (Enterprise.WW is the folder where the XML file is stored)

This XML file will install all the components of the Office 2007 Enterprise suite. If you want to continue customizing the components to be installed, check this example of Config.xml that selects only Word, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and remove remaining components.

Config.xml Example

<Configuration Product="Enterprise">

     <Display Level="none" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="no" AcceptEula="yes" />
     <USERNAME Value="Augusto Alvarez" />
     <AddLanguage Id="match" />
     <AddLanguage Id="en-us" ShellTransform="Yes" />
     <OptionState Id="AccessFiles" State="absent" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="ExcelFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="GrooveFiles" State="Absent" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="OneNoteFiles" State="Local" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="OUTLOOKFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="PPTFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="PubPrimary" State="Absent" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="RMSFiles" State="Local" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="WORDFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="XDOCSFiles" State="Local" Children="force" />
     <OptionState Id="SHAREDFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="TOOLSFiles" State="Local" />
     <OptionState Id="EXCELFiles" State="Local" />

</Configuration>

 

For more information about Config.xml customization check this link: Config.xml file in the 2007 Office system.

Adding Office 2007 to the Task Sequence

With the previous steps we have already added the Office suite and configured to a silent installation. Now we need to introduce it on the task sequence prepared on the previous post.

1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Task Sequences” > “Win7” > “Properties”.

2. Access the tab “Task Sequence”. Here are all the steps involved in the process, you can check all the options (most of them did not appear on the Task Sequence wizard) and change their values or disable specific steps.

3. The step that we are interested in is “State Restore” > “Install Applications”. Select “Install a single application” > “Microsoft Office 2007”. Click “OK”.

If you later want to add more applications to the same task sequence, use the same step on this task sequence, select “Add” > “General” > “Install Application”. The application must, of course, added already to MDT.

Now the installation of Office 2007 it’s included on the “Deploy Windows 7” sequence and will occur silently with the parameters included.

On the next post we’ll see how to boot and generate the Windows 7 image that will be captured and ready to be deployed on your environment.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part I

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part III

Cheers!

With testking 642-446 study guide, you will have the chance to learn step by step procedure to create customized descriptions for window 7. Sign up for testking 642-383 online training and get testking 70-662 free tutorials to learn about MDT 2010 to prepare, install and capture customized images for window 7.