Lesson 1: Microsoft Outlook 2000 Installation Types

Microsoft Office 2000 includes Outlook 2000, but this application is also available as a separate product for Exchange 2000 Server, so you are not forced to fully deploy Office to benefit from Outlook's messaging and information management capabilities. Nevertheless, users can benefit from Outlook's tight integration with Microsoft Office, which often leads organizations to the decision to fully deploy Microsoft Office at a later stage. You can deploy Outlook 2000 before, with, or after other Office 2000 applications.

This lesson only covers the installation of Outlook 2000 for Exchange 2000 Server, but the installation strategies and tools remain the same when you are deploying Outlook 2000 as part of Microsoft Office. The Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit Tools and Utilities can help facilitate Outlook and Office rollouts. You should also obtain the newest service release for Microsoft Office, currently Service Release 1a, to update your installation with the most updated fixes and patches.

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

• List the hardware requirements for the 32-bit version of Outlook 2000.
• Perform a local Outlook installation.
• Install a client using a shared network installation point.
• Use installation tools to configure client parameters prior to setup.

Estimated time to complete this lesson: 90 minutes

Installation Overview

You can install Outlook 2000 with no e-mail support, with only Internet support, or with support for corporate and workgroup environments. No e-mail support is useful for users without a messaging platform who still want to be able to manage personal contacts, tasks , appointments, and documents. Internet support makes sending and receiving mail from an Internet service provider possible. When deploying Outlook in an Exchange 2000 Server organization, however, you should always choose the option for corporate and workgroup environments.

Outlook 2000 Requirements

Outlook 2000 requires at least an Intel Pentium-compliant processor and 8 MB of RAM on Microsoft Windows 95/98, Windows NT, or Windows 2000. To get better performance, however, consider doubling the minimum requirements. Remember that up to 160 MB of disk space is necessary, depending on the selected installation options.

If you are planning to deploy Outlook 2000 on workstations running Windows NT 4.0, make sure at least Service Pack 3 is installed on these computers. You should also take into consideration that Outlook 2000 requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, which will be installed automatically during setup if it wasn't deployed beforehand. In fact, you cannot install Outlook 2000 without Internet Explorer on the workstation.

Windows Installer

Unlike previous versions of Outlook that required procedural scripts to control the setup process, Outlook 2000 takes full advantage of Windows Installer technology. This new technology relies primarily on .msi package files, which are databases that describe the relationships between the features and components for a given product, such as Outlook 2000. Features are components or groups of components that you can choose to install. Components , in turn , are collections of files, registry keys, and other resources that are handled as an atomic unit, which ensures that mutually dependent files and entries are installed or uninstalled together.

Windows Installer is part of the Windows 2000 operating system, where it runs as a system service using the LocalSystem account. On systems running Microsoft Windows 95/98 and Windows NT Workstation, it will be added to the operating system during the first installation. You can find detailed information about Windows Installer in the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit.

NOTE

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Windows Installer facilitates the deployment and maintenance of Windows-based software and is available to independent software vendors (ISVs) as a universal installation technology.

Setup Command-Line Properties

By specifying command-line options, you can control the way Setup installs Outlook on your computer. You can specify, for instance, whether Setup should run interactively or in quiet mode without user interaction. A complete reference about all the available switches and options, customizable properties, and their formats is available in a spreadsheet called SETUPREF.XLS, which you can find in the Office Information program group (click Start, then point to Programs, Microsoft Office Tools, and then Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit Documents) if you have installed the Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit.

SETUP.INI

Command-line properties can lead to huge and puzzling commands, such as setup /qn TRANSFORMS="c:\Blue Sky.MST" COMPANYNAME="Blue Sky Airlines", which are difficult to handle. An easier option is to specify the required properties in a SETUP.INI file. A sample SETUP.INI file containing helpful comments is available on Outlook's installation CD in the root directory. Every command-line option has a corresponding .ini setting. Of course, you cannot edit the file on the installation CD directly, but you can save a modified version on your hard disk and specify this file through the /Settings command-line option (for instance, SETUP.EXE /Settings c:\MYSETUP.INI).

Alternatively, you can copy the installation files to a network installation share point and edit SETUP.INI in this location. SETUP.INI is the default initialization file in an installation directory, used when no other file was specified in the command line.

Customizing Installation Packages

You have the option to use the Custom Installation Wizard to further customize the Outlook installation process. As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, this wizard is part of the Office 2000 Resource Kit. It helps you create .mst transform files, which Windows Installer can apply during the setup process. Transform files allow you to override the settings in the .msi database of Windows Installer. You can read more about the Custom Installation Wizard later in this lesson.

Windows 2000 Group Policies

If you are running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional on your client computers, deployment of Outlook 2000 becomes remarkably easy. Take advantage of the software installation and maintenance feature provided by Active Directory group policies. You can manage group policies for all or a subset of your Windows 2000 users, which includes central management of software settings. Either assign Outlook 2000 to your users (or computers) or publish the application.

If you assign Outlook 2000, users will be able to launch Outlook from the Programs group in the Start menu without prior installation. Outlook 2000 will then be installed automatically on first use. When you publish the software, on the other hand, you provide users with a dedicated installation option in the Add/Remove Programs applet of the Control Panel. Users then need to install Outlook 2000 themselves before they are able to use it.

Local Installation

A local installation refers to the method of installing all client files on the computer's local hard disk. Outlook offers two different local installation options for this purpose—Install Now and Customize. The Install Now option installs all the components that are required by the average user. However, if you need complete control over the setup process and the selection of Outlook features, choose Customize. The local installation method was used in the "Getting Started" section of "About This Book" to prepare BLUESKY-WKSTA for Chapters 1 through 4.

Starting the Setup Process

To perform a local installation, you need to start SETUP.EXE from the installation CD or from a network share. At startup, Setup checks whether Windows Installer is available on the local computer and installs it if not found.

NOTE

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You need the permissions of a local administrator if you want to install Windows Installer on Windows NT 4.0.

Maintenance Mode

After making sure Windows Installer is available, Setup checks whether Outlook is already installed. If it is, Setup switches into maintenance mode to allow you to add or remove Outlook features. Maintenance mode is signified by the presence of the following Setup options: Repair Outlook, Add Or Remove Features, and Remove Outlook.

Installation Process

To perform the actual Outlook installation, Setup launches MSIEXEC.EXE, a component of Windows Installer. MSIEXEC.EXE utilizes a DLL called MSI.DLL to retrieve information about available components and selections from the .msi database. If you have specified a transform file to customize the installation process, this .mst file is applied on top of the .msi database. Further command-line properties specified for Setup via SETUP.INI or command line are taken in last (see Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1 Launching the Outlook 2000 setup process

Default Network Installation

A shared client installation refers to a configuration where the majority of the client files are kept on a file server within the network (see Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.2 Running Outlook from a network share

When running Setup from a network share instead of a local CD, there is a difference in the installation options that are available for individual features. After accepting the licensing agreement, select the Customize option, specify where to install Outlook, and then, on the screen allowing you to select the individual Outlook features, click on the node for Microsoft Outlook For Windows, for example. In the shortcut menu, the Run From CD option changes to Run From Network; Run All From CD becomes Run All From Network (see Figure 8.2). You can specify these options to run the entire client or selected components directly from the installation point. Because the files are not copied from this network share to the local computer, you must keep the network server continuously available to your users.

NOTE

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The advantages of a shared installation, such as saved local disk space, can also become disadvantages. For instance, most of the files must be loaded from the file server during client startup, which increases network traffic and typically slows down the startup process. Likewise, if the network server is temporarily down or not available for any reason, you won't be able to start Outlook at all.

Creating an Administrative Installation Point

The administrative installation point is the shared access point for a customized network installation, which must be created explicitly by running the Setup program with the /A option. Within the installation point, you can edit SETUP.INI or create a transform file and then deploy Outlook over the network. Alternatively, you can burn customized CDs for users who cannot install or run Outlook over the network but want to benefit from a preconfigured installation. Preparing custom Outlook CDs does not infringe the license agreement as long as you make sure these copies are not installed without a client license from Microsoft.

Exercise 1: Preparing an Administrative Installation Point

In this exercise you will prepare an administrative installation point on a computer running Exchange 2000 Server. In subsequent exercises in this chapter, you will use this installation point to deploy Outlook 2000.

To view a multimedia demonstration that displays how to perform this procedure, run the EX1CH8.AVI files from the \Exercise_Information\Chapter8 folder on the Supplemental Course Materials CD.

Prerequisites

• Log on as Administrator to BLUESKY-SRV1.
• Insert the Microsoft Outlook 2000 CD into the CD drive.

To prepare an administrative installation point

1. Start Windows Explorer, create a directory called Outlook Installation on drive D (you may have to format drive D with NTFS first), and share this directory for network access under the name Outlook. Assign the Everyone group at least Read permissions to the network share.
2. Click Start button, select Run, and, in the Run dialog box, type e:\setup.exe /a data1.msi .
3. Click OK to launch Setup, and, on the Microsoft Outlook 2000 Administrative Mode welcome screen, enter the CD key for your installation CD. Under Company, make sure Blue Sky Airlines is displayed, and then click Next.
4. On the End-User Licensing wizard screen, select the I Accept The Terms In The License Agreement option, and then click Next.
5. On the Location wizard screen, type D:\Outlook Installation or click Browse to conveniently select the directory created in Step 1. Then click Install Now.

   At this point, you are creating an administrative installation point on the Exchange 2000 server (see Figure 8.3).

6. In the final Microsoft Outlook 2000 Setup dialog box informing you that Setup was completed successfully, click OK.

Figure 8.3 Creating an administrative installation point

Exercise Summary

Use the command line SETUP.EXE /A DATA1.MSI to copy the Outlook files to an installation point on a network server. You need to provide the CD key and company name that you want to assign to all Outlook installations from this location and accept the licensing agreement.

NOTE

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Setup /A will modify the package file DATA1.MSI to identify the network share as an administrative installation point.

Preconfiguring the Network Installation

The administrative installation point is an ideal place to preconfigure client settings and specify the components to install. As mentioned earlier in this lesson, you have various options for customizing the setup process.

IMPORTANT

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Do not alter any folders or files in the installation point other than SETUP.INI and transform files to guarantee a properly functioning Setup procedure.

Custom Installation Wizard

The Custom Installation Wizard allows you to modify the setup process extensively, including modifications that you cannot specify in the command line or SETUP.INI. You can specify where to install Outlook and with what features, and you can detail to a large extent the client configuration parameters. You can also add your own files to the installation process, such as advanced business applications or company forms, and set custom registry entries.

Furthermore, it is possible to suppress the display of arbitrary Outlook features by selecting the Hide option for the corresponding item in the Set Feature Installation States screen of the Custom Installation Wizard. Hidden features may still be installed in the background if you have specified the installation state accordingly (Run From Network, Run All From Network, Install On First Use, and so on), but are not displayed when users run Setup interactively.

NOTE

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If you hide a feature in the Custom Installation Wizard, all subordinate features belonging to the feature will be hidden as well.

Conflicting Options

For some options, you can specify a value in SETUP.INI, while a different value may be listed in the transform file, and yet another value could be used in the command line. This clearly leads to a conflict, which Windows Installer handles according to the following rule: The transform file has lowest priority, followed by SETUP.INI, which is superseded by the command-line options.

Unattended Installation

The unattended Setup mode, which is launched using the /Q command-line parameter, is the basis for installing Outlook on numerous workstations automatically. You should prepare an administrative installation point with preconfigured setup files first. You can then deploy the client by running Setup /Q with login scripts via a shortcut in a Web page, through Windows 2000 group policies, or by using Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS). If you want to use SMS to distribute the client software, you must use SMS package files (.pdf). The Microsoft Office 2000 Resource Kit contains more information about Setup command-line parameters and the deployment of Outlook and other Office programs using SMS.

Exercise 2: Deploying Outlook 2000

In this exercise you will finalize the preparation of the installation point using the Custom Installation Wizard. After that, you will deploy Outlook 2000 using the unattended installation method.

To view a multimedia demonstration that displays how to perform this procedure, run the EX2CH8*.AVI files from the \Exercise_Information\Chapter8 folder on the Supplemental Course Materials CD.

Prerequisites

• Log on as Administrator to BLUESKY-SRV1.
• Obtain the Custom Installation Wizard, as explained at the begging of this chapter. Install it on BLUESKY-SRV1 according to the descriptions in the Microsoft Office Resource Kit. Alternatively, if you cannot obtain or install CIW, run the multimedia demonstration to follow this exercise, and install Outlook 2000 manually with all components on BLUESKY-WKSTA.

To deploy Outlook 2000

1. On BLUESKY-SRV1, click Start, point to Programs, then to Microsoft Office Tools, and then to Microsoft Office Resource Kit Tools. Launch the Custom Installation Wizard.
2. On the Welcome To The Custom Installation Wizard screen, click Next.
3. On the Open The MSI File wizard screen, under Name And Path To The MSI File To Open , type D:\Outlook Installation\Data1.msi , and then click Next.
4. In the Open The MST File screen, make sure Do Not Open An Existing MST File is selected, and then click Next.
5. On the Select The MST File To Save wizard screen, under Name And Path Of MST File, type D:\Outlook Installation\BlueSky.mst , and then click Next.

   At this point, you have specified your installation directory as the location of the transform file (see Figure 8.4). This guarantees that the customization settings are generally available for your Outlook rollout.

   

   Figure 8.4 Starting the Custom Installation Wizard

6. On the Specify Default Path And Organization wizard screen, under Organization, type Blue Sky Airlines , and then click Next.
7. On the Remove Previous Versions wizard screen, notice and accept the defaults, and then click Next.
8. On the Set Feature Installation States wizard screen, click on the Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) node, and select Run From My Computer. It is generally advisable to install CDO on your workstations because many Exchange workgroup solutions rely on this object library.
9. Click on the Electronic Forms Designer Runtime node, and select Run From My Computer to support legacy 16-bit forms of the former Exchange Client.
10. Right-click on the Converters And Filters node, and select Hide, then click Next.

    At this point, you have specified to install Outlook with the most important features and hide the document converters and filters (see Figure 8.5). This feature will still be installed, but users will be unable to change converter settings when running Setup interactively.

    

    Figure 8.5 Selecting Outlook features

11. On the Customize Default Application Settings wizard screen, do not change any settings, then click Next.
12. On the Add Files To The Installation wizard screen, do not add any files, then click Next.
13. On the Add Registry Entries wizard screen, click Add. In the Add/Modify Registry Entry dialog box, specify the following information (which enables the booking of online conferences via Outlook, as explained in Chapter 25, "Real-Time Collaboration"):

    Field	Data
    Root	HKEY_CURRENT_USER
    Data Type	REG_SZ
    Key	Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\ExchangeConferencing
    Value Name	(Default)
    Value Data	Not Set

14. The actual value is not of interest, but existence of the ExchangeConferencing key enables confirmed reservations of conference resources. Click OK, and then click Next.
15. On the Add, Modify, Or Remove Shortcuts wizard screen, accept the defaults, and click Next.
16. On the Identify Additional Servers wizard screen, do not add additional servers. Additional servers can help to increase the resilience of the deployment, but are not required to successfully implement Outlook in small environments. Click Next.
17. On the Add Installations And Run Programs wizard screen, do not add any programs to the installation, then click Next.
18. On the Customize Outlook Installation Options wizard screen, select Customize Outlook Profile And Account Information, and make sure Corporate Or Workgroup Settings is displayed under Configuration Type.
19. From the list of configuration categories, select General. In the right pane, under Enter Profile Name , type CIW Generated Profile . Make sure Microsoft Exchange Server is selected in the Which Service Should Be The Default Store list box. Activate the Overwrite Existing Profile check box.
20. From the Categories list, select Services List. In the right pane, select the following check boxes: Include Microsoft Exchange Server Service and Include Outlook Address Book Service.
21. From the Categories list, select Exchange Settings, and, in the right pane under The Name Of The User's Mailbox, type % username % . Underneath, type BLUESKY-SRV1 as the server running Exchange 2000. Click Next.

    At this point, you have preconfigured the users' default messaging profile (see Figure 8.6).

    

    Figure 8.6 Specifying a default messaging profile

22. On the Customize IE 5 Installation Options wizard screen, accept the defaults, and click Next.
23. On the Modify Setup Properties wizard screen, examine the list of options, and then click Next. The options specified here are not written to SETUP.INI; instead, they are kept in the transform file.
24. On the Save Changes wizard screen, click Finish.

    At this point, you have successfully created a transform file, which you can specify in the Setup command line to customize the installation process (see Figure 8.7).

25. On the Custom Installation Wizard screen, note the command line to launch Setup unattended using the transform file, and then click Exit to complete the preparation.

    

    Figure 8.7 Completing the Custom Installation Wizard

26. In Windows Explorer, open the \Outlook Installation directory, and edit the SETUP.INI file, which is a hidden file that is only visible when activating the Show Hidden Files And Folders folder option.
27. Remove the semicolon from the line [MST] and, underneath, add the line MST1=BlueSky.mst . Save the changes. In this way, the transform file generated above is always applied when Setup is launched from the \Outlook Installation directory.
28. On BLUESKY-WKSTA, log on as Administrator, click Start, point to Run, and, in the Run dialog box, type \\bluesky-srv1\outlook\setup /qr , then click OK.

    At this point, you are installing Outlook 2000 unattended on BLUESKY-WKSTA with the option to display a reduced user interface (see Figure 8.8). Alternatively, you may suppress all progress information and dialogs by specifying the /qn option. Either way, Outlook will take several minutes to install.

Exercise Summary

You can facilitate the deployment of Outlook 2000 when preparing an administrative installation point and configuring the Setup environment using the Custom Installation Wizard. A prepared installation point in the network allows you to run the Outlook 2000 Setup program unattended or via group policy assignments. Windows 2000 group policies, however, require Windows 2000 Professional to be installed on all workstation PCs.

Figure 8.8 Running Setup unattended with a reduced user interface

Default Messaging Profile Generation

A messaging profile, sometimes also called a MAPI profile, describes the set of those information services that should be activated during a particular session. At least one must exist to successfully start Outlook 2000 (see Figure 8.9). You can read more about MAPI profiles in Chapter 9, "MAPI-Based Clients."

Profile Wizard

Immediately after the installation of Outlook on a new computer, no messaging profile exists. However, the client is unable to operate without it, and, therefore, Outlook automatically prompts for all the required information to create a valid messaging profile when you start the client for the very first time. You can read more about Exchange-specific profile settings in Lesson 2.

When you have installed Outlook 2000 without any customization of Setup files, upon startup you need to configure the client with support for corporate and workgroup environments. In the Microsoft Outlook Setup Wizard dialog box, you have to select the Microsoft Exchange Server check box. When you click Next, you must specify the name of your server and ensure the correctness of the mailbox name to successfully start Outlook.

Figure 8.9 A messaging profile for Outlook 2000

OUTLOOK.PRF

The configuration of a messaging profile may overwhelm your end users. Consequently, it is preferable to configure the important settings prior to the client installation. One option is to create a file called OUTLOOK.PRF and place it in the administrative installation point. This file will then be copied to the Windows directory (\Winnt) during the installation. When Outlook starts for the very first time on a new computer, it looks for OUTLOOK.PRF in the Windows directory. If it finds the file, Outlook uses it to generate a default profile. You can read more about the generation of messaging profiles using .PRF files in Chapter 9, "MAPI-Based Clients."

Custom Installation Wizard

One significant disadvantage of OUTLOOK.PRF is that you need to edit it using a text editor. A sample OUTLOOK.PRF file will be installed with the Microsoft Office Resource Kit in the \Program Files\Orktools\Toolbox\Docs Lists Samples\Outlook directory.

To conveniently create messaging profiles, most organizations use the Custom Installation Wizard. After launching the Custom Installation Wizard, on the Customize Outlook Installation Options wizard screen, select the Customize Outlook Profile And Account Information option, and then make your choices as required (see Exercise 2). The Custom Installation Wizard saves your changes in the transform file. During Outlook installation, the settings will be transferred into the client's Registry. You will thus not end up with an OUTLOOK.PRF file in the Windows directory through this approach. You have the option of overriding an existing profile, which would be impossible when using OUTLOOK.PRF.

Exercise 3: Verifying the Profile Generation

In this exercise you will verify the automatic generation of messaging profiles when starting Outlook 2000 for the first time on a new workstation.

To view a multimedia demonstration that displays how to perform this procedure, run the EX3CH8.AVI files from the \Exercise_Information\Chapter8 folder on the Supplemental Course Materials CD.

Prerequisites

• Complete Exercise 2, earlier in this lesson.
• Log on as Administrator to BLUESKY-WKSTA.

To verify the profile generation

1. On BLUESKY-WKSTA, right-click the Microsoft Outlook icon on the desktop. From the shortcut menu, select Properties.
2. In the Mail dialog box, note that no messaging profile exists on the computer. Click Close, and then start Outlook.
3. Several dialog boxes will appear informing you that Windows installs further components and configures the Outlook settings. After that, Outlook will start and connect to the Administrator's mailbox.

   At this point, Outlook has created the default profile named CIW Generated Profile for you. The environment variable <username>, specified in Exercise 2 for the mailbox name, was substituted with your account information (see Figure 8.10).

4. Repeat Step 1 to verify that the Microsoft Exchange Server transport and Outlook Address Book services have been configured automatically as part of the CIW Generated Profile.
5. Close all dialog boxes and Outlook 2000.

Figure 8.10 An automatically generated default profile

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

 \Software

  \Microsoft

   \OfficeCustomizeWizard

    .0

     \RegKeyPaths