I am currently in the process of creating my first Windows 7 Enterprise Image for Light Touch Deployment via Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) and Windows Deployment Services (more on this at a later date) and am currently at the stage of organising my client applications for deployment.  Office 2007 is on the top of my list and in today’s post I will show you how you can incorporate Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 in the single installation also referred to as slipstreaming and in the second part of this post discuss how you can further customize an installation of Office 2007 via the Office Customization Tool (OCT).

In Office 2007, Microsoft has provided you with the ability to slip stream service packs and updates via the “Updates” folder located in the installation media or the distribution point that you create.  That means that the installation will always look in the updates folder and automatically install these automatically as part of the initial installation process.  This is useful in situations like the one above where you are creating a new Windows Image for deployment and you want to expedite the installation process removing the need to rely on Microsoft Updates for service pack installations.

So let’s begin by creating a folder in a shared location (your distribution point) and copy the contents of the Office 2007 media to this location.  In my case I will create a folder called Office2007.

\\SERVER\SHARE\Office2007 In my case I have mapped this file share to the letter M for later reference.

We now need to download the latest service pack available for Office.  At the time of this post, Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 is the latest and can be downloaded from the  Microsoft Download Centre via the following link.  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5&displaylang=en

You will notice that the file downloaded is an exe file “office2007sp2-kb953195-fullfile-en-us.exe” which we will need to extract in order to retrieve the msp files that are needed for the “Updates” folder that is located in our distribution point.

In order to extract the files, run the following command from command prompt;  In my example I have saved the executable to the root of M.

M:\office2007sp2-kb953195-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:”M:\Office2007\Updates”

File extraction will now proceed.

Once the file have been extracted, you will receive the below completion notice.  Click OK to acknowledge.

Upon completion the msp files will be listed below as follows.

Now that our distribution share contains the latest updates, let’s now shift our focus to the Office Customization Tool which is available to IT Professionals and Volume Licensing customers providing you with the ability to further customize the installation of Office 2007 by creating a custom msp file that can be deployed as part of the initial deployment, or at a later date if making minor modifications to an existing installation.

The OCT is invoked by typing the following command from the Office 2007 media;

setup.exe /admin

We will create a new setup customization file so select the first option and then click OK.

You will now proceed and make any modifications that are necessary for your deployment.  Such modifications may include but are not limited to;

Entering your Organization name under “Install location and organization name”

Entering your Volume License Key under “Licensing and user Interface”

Creating a default Outlook profile for your user under “Outlook  profile”

e.g. Modifying the “Install location and organization name” parameter

Once you have entered your modifications, you will need to save the MSP file that you will then copy across to include in the updates folder which also includes the service pack 2 msp’s that we extracted earlier.

More details on the OCT for Office 2007 can be found in the following Microsoft TechNet Link; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179097.aspx

We are almost done.  We are now ready to deploy Office 2007 to all our computers from our single distribution point that includes the latest service packs, updates and modifications.

My preferred method in deploying Office 2007 is through Group Policy computer start-up scripts which is explained in quite a bit of detail in the following Microsoft TechNet Link; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179134.aspx There are notable advantages in deploying Office 2007 via start-up scripts as opposed to the traditional Group Policy Software Installation method with the main advantage in being able to utilise the updates folder that we created and slip stream all updates and modifications in the single installation.  This cannot be done via Group Policy Software Installation as noted in the following Microsoft TechNet Link; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179214.aspx

Microsoft provides you with the following example script for deploying Office 2007 which you will then assign to Group Policy start-up scripts within your specific Group Policy Object.

setlocal

REM *********************************************************************REM Environment customization begins here. Modify variables below.REM *********************************************************************

REM Get ProductName from the Office product's core Setup.xml file.set ProductName=Enterprise

REM Set DeployServer to a network-accessible location containing the Office source files.set DeployServer=\\server\share\Office12

REM Set ConfigFile to the configuration file to be used for deployment REM (required)set ConfigFile=\\server\share\Office12\Enterprise.WW\config.xml

REM Set LogLocation to a central directory to collect log files.set LogLocation=\\server\share\Office12Logs

REM *********************************************************************REM Deployment code begins here. Do not modify anything below this line.REM *********************************************************************

IF NOT "%ProgramFiles(x86)%"=="" SET WOW6432NODE=WOW6432NODE\

reg query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\%WOW6432NODE%Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\%ProductName%if %errorlevel%==1 (goto DeployOffice) else (goto End)

REM If 1 returned, the product was not found. Run setup here.: DeployOfficestart /wait %DeployServer%\setup.exe /config %ConfigFile%echo %date% %time% Setup ended with error code %errorlevel%. >> %LogLocation%\%computername%.txt

REM If 0 or other was returned, the product was found or another error occurred. Do nothing.:End

Endlocal

We are now ready to deploy Microsoft Office 2007.

SharePoint is all about collaboration right?  As much as we enjoy sending emails, there are limitations and shortcomings around collaboration when relying on good old trusty port 25.  Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange are great communications tools but fail miserably when it comes to sharing information and working together in achieving a common goal.  Have you ever tried to organise and plan a meeting by sending emails to attendees with multiple attachments and re-sending those when modifications are made.  As a recipient this can become quite overwhelming and at times confusing,  especially when you end up with 3 different versions of the same attachment.  Welcome SharePoint Meeting Workspace Sites!   In today’s post I will be promoting the use of Meeting Workspace Sites in SharePoint and how it will provide you with the framework to organise, capture and manage a meeting from start to finish without those annoying emails.

Meeting workspaces sites are out of the box templates within SharePoint  and are great for structured meetings.  These include but are not restricted to your standard regularly scheduled Team or Departmental meetings, or it maybe for a specific project group meeting.  You can create a Meeting Workspace from any site within SharePoint but as best practice and to keep matters simple let’s begin by creating a separate blank site to store these meetings within our existing Team Site.

Click on Site Actions / Create Site and fill in the details as below.  I am selecting a Blank Collaboration Site to house my Meeting Workspaces.

I will now create my first Meeting Workspace for a meeting that is being held in a couple of weeks.  As the Site Administrator I will click on Site Actions / Create / Sites and Workspaces.

I will then enter a title and a description if required and then select a template from the “Meetings” tab.   The description of each template and usage requirements are highlighted in the template selection area which I have replicated below for your convenience and I have also listed the web parts that are included by default for each.

Basic Meeting Workspace

A site to plan, organize, and capture the results of a meeting. It provides lists for managing the agenda, meeting attendees, and documents.  The following web parts are included by default;

• Objectives
  Attendees
  Agenda
  Document Library

Blank Meeting Workspace

Name says it all.  No web parts are included by default

Decision Meeting Workspace

A site for meetings that track status or make decisions. It provides lists for creating tasks, storing documents, and recording decisions.  The following web parts are included by default;

• Objectives
  Attendees
  Agenda
  Document Library
  Tasks
  Decisions

Social Meeting Workspace

A site to plan social occasions. It provides lists for tracking attendees, providing directions, and storing pictures of the event. The following web parts are included by default;

• Attendees
  Directors
  Things to Bring
  Discussion Board
  Picture Library

Multipage Meeting Workspace

A site to plan, organize, and capture the results of a meeting. It provides lists for managing the agenda and meeting attendees in addition to two blank pages for you to customize based on your requirements.  The following web parts are included by default;

• Objectives
  Attendees
  Agenda
  2 Blank Pages

In this meeting I would like to have the ability to allocate tasks that arise from the meeting itself so I have selected the Decision Meeting Workspace template.

After clicking on the Create button your Meeting workspace will be setup in a matter of seconds with the pre-defined web parts based on the template selected.  Please note that you can easily add other web parts to the Meeting Workspace and then save it as a custom template to be reused.

In my case, I am going to add the “Things to Bring” web part into this meeting workspace via Site Actions / Create / Custom Lists.  This is then added automatically added to my Meeting Workspace Site below.

Great, that’s too easy!  Where to now?   As the meeting coordinator I am now going to add the agenda items, upload any documents that are required to be discussed during the meeting and add items that need to be brought into the meeting.

We are all running Microsoft Exchange and Outlook right? I am sensing the “better together” theme that Microsoft always seem to market and hey, I am not disagreeing they do have a valid point.  I am now going to launch my Outlook client and add the meeting to my calendar and at the same time formally invite the attendees and link the meeting workspace that we have just created for our monthly admin meeting into the body of the calendar meeting request all in one step.

Let’s create a meeting request in Outlook, specify the subject, location, start and end times (this is all important as this information gets appended to the details section of the Meeting Workspace  SharePoint Site) .  Then click on Invite Attendees and add them to your meeting. You will notice the Meeting Workspace icon in the Office Ribbon which you will now click on.

The meeting workspace tool bar then appears on the right.  Click on Change Settings as we are not creating a Meeting Workspace as this has already been created.  Click on Select a location and click on Other …

Copy and paste the address of the Meeting Workspace Site that we created earlier minus the default.aspx.

Click on OK and then click on Link to an existing workspace and select the relevant meeting workspace.

Click OK

Then Click on Link to insert the Meeting workspace site link directly into the body of the meeting request.

You will end up with the summary below.

Click on Send to invite the users to the meeting.   If the selected users do not have the rights to access the site you will be notified and provided with a popup in the Outlook notification bar that will link you to the Add Users permissions area to that site.

If I now navigate back to the site you will notice that the attendees are added and their responses are also captured. The additional details from the calendar request such as subject, date/time, location are also prefilled automatically.

During the meeting, you would ideally have this site open on your projector screen and discuss the agenda items, open documents to discuss from the document library, potentially add new documents as the meeting progresses such as the minutes of meeting and because I had selected the decision meeting workspace template you could as the meeting coordinator also allocate tasks on the fly which could potentially be sent via an automatic email.  How?  Navigate to the List Setting within the Tasks Library, Click on Advanced Settings and click Yes to Send email when ownership is assigned.

As you can see, through Meeting Workspaces and Outlook we have been able to collect and organise the documents needed for the meeting, create an agenda, track and manage attendee lists and responses.  During the meeting we have also been able to easily gain access to the materials being presented, log any decisions being made and assign tasks to be completed against individuals.  Finally after the meeting, we have created a single site that contains all the relevant information including post follow up materials, the ability to tack the progress of assigned tasks and everything in between.

Microsoft has announced the official names of the next release of 3 major products, Exchange, SharePoint and Office.  Initially labelled version 14 for all 3 I can sense “the better together” marketing theme that Microsoft have used in the past when it came to releasing the same 3 products in 2007.  I will discuss some of the highlights below for each product.

Exchange 2010 now available in beta can actually be downloaded from the Microsoft TechNet Site.  Some of the features noted include enhancements to the “anywhere experience” providing enhanced universal inbox experience and an integrated archiving functionality which I will be interested to compare against common 3rd party products that have been in the market for many years such as Symantec’s Enterprise Vault and Quest’s Archive Manager.  Other notable mentions include enhancements to the Unified Messaging role that was introduced with Exchange 2007 which includes a new feature called “Voice Mail Preview” which will allow the user to read the contents of an audio recording, just like reading a normal email!  Safari and Firefox users will enjoy the same premium Outlook Web Access experience (OWA) that was normally reserved for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer only.  This will further extend the OWA experience to more users who are not necessarily running a Windows Operating System or prefer to use alternative browsers.  Another biggie for organisations that highly rely on shared calendars is the ability to view those also in OWA, particularly useful when booking meetings and resources.  More information can be found at the Exchange 2010 Microsoft Site.

SharePoint 2010 is predicted to be released in beta form in the third quarter of this year and released to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.  At the moment there isn’t much insight in what to expect but a number of predictions are being made.  We will just have to wait and see until more information is released by the SharePoint Product Team.  The Microsoft SharePoint Product Team have just placed a blog post detailing the official details with regards to the official naming of SharePoint 14.

Office 2010 is expected to show subtle external UI differences to Office 2007 with most changes and enhancements done under the hood and with integration with other products notably SharePoint 2010.  Office 2010 will also include a suite of web applications a.k.a “Office Web” to compete with existing cloud computing offerings such as Google Apps.  We also know that this will be first Office release that will be available in 64 bit.  I’d expect the full release to coincide with the release of SharePoint 2010, being from the same family of products.

For me, it’s time to get my hands dirty on Exchange 2010 beta and potentially coexist it with my current Exchange 2007 infrastructure.  Details of coexisting with Exchange 2010 can be found on TechNet.  I’ll let you know how I go