Managing OEM + Retail Outlook Configurations

[evoltech]

I have been trying to come up with a way to Manage a network of Outlook installations that are largely OEM and Retail. The company is in a slow process of migrating to Enterprise Office Installation, but until then I can't make use of the Maintenance Wizard from the Office 2003 resource kit (

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298808/en-us).

I would like to be able to make site wide changes to various settings in Outlook for the default profile (outgoing smtp server, smtp authentication username, etc.) as needed.

I started going down the path of trying to figure how to script this with either VB or Perl and deploy the scripts with Group Policy, but can't seem to figure it out, and was wondering if anyone here had any ideas or recommendations of other forums?

 

[lhuegele]

Why not just use Global Policy for this?

 

[evoltech]

I am not sure what Global Policy is. Do you mean Group Policy? If you do, I was unaware that you could make these settings there. If you can do you need a special GPO template?

 

[evoltech]

There is a set of ADM files avcailable to configure various settings of Office 2003 from Group Policy(Office 2003 ADM files, Corresponding documentation, Office 2007 ADM files). These ADM files only seem to allow changes to exchange settings, not pop or smtp settings. Am I missing something here? Is there a easy way to create your own ADM files? Is there a certain file outlook gets it's account settings from?