3 Connector for Microsoft Outlook Pre-Installation Tasks

This chapter provides information that requires consideration prior to installing Connector for Microsoft Outlook.

About Connector for Microsoft Outlook Installation Considerations

The deployment toolkit contains a variety of deployment options with operational options that permit considerable flexibility in devising and implementing a suitable migration strategy for most any environment, circumstances and administrator preferences. The topics in this section describe the most common scenarios, and explain how the migration tools accommodate them.

Interactive User Installation (Self-Service)

The setup wizard is designed to be run by end users by themselves. The setup wizard can be placed on a file server, so it need not be individually installed on end-user workstations. However, the physical installation of the plug-in on user desktops requires access privileges that often are disallowed to many or most end users. If users do not have installation privileges for their own desktops, either of the following strategies may be used:

• Administrators physically install the plug-in on individual users' desktops.

• Use a configuration management tool to push the software to multiple users' desktops (explained in "Automated Installation Using Configuration Management Tools").

After the software has been physically copied to a user's desktop, the user can run the setup wizard to configure the software and convert existing personal storage folders (.pst) files.

End users who run the conversion program will provide their own credentials for the servers. This method therefore permits conversion of password-protected .pst files (see "Password-Protected Personal Stores in Outlook"), and lets users specify which of their personal stores should be converted for use with the plug-in.

Users can read unconverted email messages, but cannot reply to them because unconverted addresses are unfamiliar to the new server. Users who have some personal stores that are very old, so that the need for a future reply is highly unlikely, may therefore opt to leave such files unconverted. The conversions can run in the background, freeing the user's computer for other work, but the process is likely to slow the performance of other applications.

The significant downsides of interactive user installation are:

• Increased demand for support from your organization's help desk, which may be considerable depending on users' technical skills and the complexity of before and after network configurations.

• Time and effort the administrator has to devote to visiting multiple user workstations to physically copy the software to the users' desktops (for users who are not authorized to perform that task for themselves).

Individual Desktop Installation

Administrators may allow some users to perform their own installations, as described above, but visit other user's desktops to perform some or all of the installation and configuration tasks for them. This approach can ensure a smooth migration for top executives or less technical users who are not prepared to perform the tasks for themselves. The deployment plan should address whether these sorts of administrator visits are warranted for any users in the organization, and for whom.

Automated Installation Using Configuration Management Tools

Software installation on user desktops requires access privileges that often are disallowed to many or most end users. Most administrators of such networks use a configuration management tool, such as Microsoft's SMS, to push the software to multiple users' desktops, a method that bypasses the requirement for user access privileges. If your network serves locked-down Windows environments, where end users cannot install software, this sort of automated configuration management can spare the administrator many visits to individual user desktops.

To accomplish a push distribution, you can use the deployment configuration program to build two different bundled installation packages for each user to be executed in succession. The first would perform the push installation of the necessary software, while the second would run an interactive process by which the user could make choices about the configuration of the installed software and the conversion of the user's own existing data files. This push method may be used to completely automate the conversion process for end users, but would require some scripting since the package must be invoked with information specific to each end user (that is, the user's credentials).

See Connector for Microsoft Outlook Administration Guide for instructions on using Microsoft's SMS to implement this push method of software distribution. This guide also explains how to use command-line switches with an SMS script to fully automate the process by passing the necessary user passwords, for the user's personal storage folders (.pst) files, to the desktop installation program.

Command-Line Switches for Desktop Installation

The Setup Wizard supports command-line switches that may be used in combination with the other desktop installation methods described above, or with an SMS script as described in the discussion on command-line switches for the user installation package in the Connector for Microsoft Outlook Administration Guide.

The installation package will support these command-line switches:

/USERNAME=xxx, where xxx is the username on the Unified Communications Suite servers

/PASSWORD=xxx, where xxx is the password on the Unified Communications Suite servers

/FULLNAME=xxx, where xxx is the display name of the user

/EMAILADDRESS=xxx, where xxx is the email address of the user

/DN=xxx, where xxx is the user DN on the Unified Communications Suite servers

/NEWPROFILENAME=xxx, where xxx is the name of the created profile

/SAVEPASSWORD=n, where n = 1 (save) or 0 (don't save)

Password-Protected Personal Stores in Outlook

Outlook users can assign passwords to their personal storage folders (.pst) files, but the Setup Wizard needs to open and modify these files in order to convert them for use with the new Connector software and the Unified Communications Suite server. Your end users will therefore have to provide the passwords for any.pst files that they want to convert.

The Setup Wizard will automatically prompt users for the necessary passwords as they are needed, but this will require user involvement that makes a Silent Mode setup impossible. If it is important for you to run the Setup Wizard in Silent Mode, users can be instructed to remove all such passwords during the conversion, or let the Wizard run with the passwords in place. If the Setup Wizard runs in Silent Mode and encounters a password-protected file, it will not convert the file, and will report that not all files were converted. Depending on the settings in your administrator's Deployment Configuration tool, the Setup Wizard may also log the event as an error.

Redistributable Files for Connector for Microsoft Outlook

In order to install Connector for Microsoft Outlook Connector, you need to download Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012. For more information, see "Redistributable Files for Connector for Microsoft Outlook".