I am new to installing software through Zenworks.  We have computers that have been previously setup with Office2003.  This past year we purchased Zenworks 7 Desktop Management.  I was wondering if it was possible that although we did not deploy Office2003 with Zenworks if other Office application could be installed.  Our management wants Publisher to be installed on all computers, it would be nice if I didn't have to touch all the workstations.  Thanks in advance

M$ releases different flavors of the office suite.  

If the flavor you manually deployed to your workstations did not have Publisher as an installable option, then you will not have any issues.  Just create your MSI application object and enjoy.

However, if your suite did include Publisher, then you will need to tweek the settings in the application object.  In the verification options, you will want to have it set to deploy files regardless (no checking, just deploy).
 

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Brent Schmidt        SPOOOOON!!!!!   
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple http://www.kiscc.com

Thanks for replying Brent.  I have tried doing a .MST and Custom Maintenance Wizard, but cannot seem to get the application to install.  Zenworks runs the package on the workstation, the screen flashes, then when I go to Start -> Programs -> Microsoft Office, Publisher is not there.  Do you have any suggestions or tips?

The initial install of Office2003 that I installed before Zenworks I checked for everything except InfoPath and Publisher to be installed.  Now I want to set it up with Zenworks to add Publisher.  Is this possible?  If so could you point to the right direction?  Thanks

okay, so publisher was part of the original package.  so this does make things difficult on you.

What is happening, is no matter what your MST tells the MSI to do, when you run the MSI, all it WILL do is check the current installation.

Altering the update options did not help?

In the application object, go to the tab labeled MSI.  In the drop down menu, choose Verify.  In the radial button, click on "reinstall all files regardless of version"

Note:  I have not done this my self, it is just an idea.

Another idea would be to use MSIEXEC command switches. Just run a simple app running MSIEXEC and use the command line switches to manipulate the install (this is all the ZfD MSI app object does anyway).  a /fa will force all files to be reinstalled.

If that still does not work, you may just want to do a snap shot to force the files down.  You can find snap shot in SYS:\PUBLIC\SNAPSHOT on the server you installed the ZfD server side agents.

Note:  Be sure to go through the resulting app object from the snap shot and remove the garbage.  Windows does a lot of registry updates just sitting there, and snap shot will pick those up.  So go through it, it does take time, and make sure you only have the app you are pushing.  And rule of thumb, if you don't know if it is needed or not, leave it.

And be sure to test, test, test and test some more before you deploy to make sure the snap shot doesn't mess up the already deployed Office suite.

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Brent Schmidt        SPOOOOON!!!!!   
Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple http://www.kiscc.com

Brent, thanks for your help and sorry for not replying sooner.  We were snowed in here in NC.  Found this link and this seemed to have been an MSI/Office issue all along and not a Zenworks issue. I thought that my CMW files were wrong. http://www.codeverge.net/item.aspx?item=354572.