t.lesh

The Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager (BCM) deployment adventure…

We’ve got a few employees who will be interacting with quite a few contacts and our CEO and CLO requested that these employees have Outlook with Business Contact Manager installed on their computers.  We purchased the necessary Microsoft eOpen licenses (NFA-00228) from CDW and I downloaded the standalone Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager installation package (SW_CD_Outlook_w_Bus_Contact_Mgr_2007_W32_English_PA_BP_X13-91441.EXE) from the eOpen website.  We use a KBOX 1100 from Kace for our system management, so I needed to figure out how to deploy Outlook 2007 with BCM remotely.  I scoured the net and found absolutely no good information to aid me in my task.  So, I needed to come up with my own solution and here it is.

1. Unpack the SW_CD_Outlook_w_Bus_Contact_Mgr_2007_W32_English_PA_BP_X13-91441.EXE file to a temporary directory. This file contains one directory with all the files called BCMStandaloneCD. For tutorial purposes we’ll say that these files are extracted to X:\BCMStandaloneCD\
2. Download the updated Office Customization Tool files and unpack this file to a temporary directory. X:\AdminTemplates\
3. Copy the contents of directory X:\AdminTemplates\Admin\ to X:\BCMStandaloneCD\Outlook\Admin\ and overwrite the old files.
4. Go to X:\BCMStandaloneCD\Outlook from a command prompt and run SETUP.EXE /ADMIN to run the Office Customization Tool (OCT).  Make sure you include your volume license key.
5. When you’re finished customizing Outlook from the OCT, save the your custom .MSP file in X:\BCMStandaloneCD\Outlook\Updates\
6. Move the entire Outlook directory (X:\BCMStandaloneCD\Outlook\) to X:\Outlook to get it out of the BCMStandaloneCD directory.
7. Now you can run the Outlook 2007 installation by itself by typing X:\Outlook\SETUP.EXE /adminfile X:\Outlook\Updates\yourfile.MSP
8. If you own a KBOX 1100, you should already know what to do next in the deployment process… ZIP the Outlook directory, upload to your KBOX, and deploy with that command line. Probably similar for other deployment mechanisms.
9. Now, we’re at the tough part, the Business Contact Manager installation. Find a file in the X:\BCMStandaloneCD\ directory called “Wizard.exe.config” and make sure it is NOT read-only.  Open “Wizard.exe.config” with Notepad or your text editor of choice.
10. Find and remove the following lines:
    • <Application>
      <ApplicationName>Microsoft Office Outlook 2007</ApplicationName>
      <ShortName>Outlook</ShortName>
      <Installer>Outlook\setup.exe</Installer>
      <ProductCode></ProductCode>
      <LaunchParameter></LaunchParameter>
      <Required>false</Required>
      <UseWindowsInstaller>false</UseWindowsInstaller>
      <RegistryKey>SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\InstallRoot</RegistryKey>
      <RegistryValue>Path</RegistryValue>
      <SpaceRequired_MB>0</SpaceRequired_MB>
      <UseWizardForUninstall>false</UseWizardForUninstall>
      <UninstallExe></UninstallExe>
      <UninstallParameter></UninstallParameter>
      <UseSQLInstance>false</UseSQLInstance>
      <ParentApplication></ParentApplication>
      </Application>
11. Save “Wizard.exe.config” and feel free to run the SETUP.EXE installer.
12. Since we moved the Outlook installation directory out of the BCMStandaloneCD directory, the BCM installer would not run because the “Wizard.exe.config” file was looking for the Outlook directory.  BCMStandaloneCD is now actually a standalone installation for BCM, but you need to make sure that Outlook 2007 is already installed before trying to run SETUP.EXE from BCMStandaloneCD.  You can ZIP this directory and upload to your KBOX and use SETUP.EXE /q to run a silent installation.