To take advantage of the full power of Office Communications Server 2007, you’ll need more than one Unified Communications (UC) softclient for the desktop.  You’ll need Office Communicator 2007 for IM presence and Telephony, Live Meeting 2007 for Web Conferencing and for integration with Outlook 2007, Outlook Add-in.  Installing these clients on thousands of desktops can be a daunting task.  There are a multiple of ways to manage desktop software deployments.  To help you manage the deployment of these UC clients, you might be interested in taking a look at this Windows Scripting Host script.  The advantage of a WSH script is that it will run on Windows XP and Windows Vista without additional pre-requisites.  It was originally created for Microsoft’s IT (MSIT) to deploy OCS 2007 internally.  To make it available to external customers, I’ve modified it to be more generic so it can be used with minimal modification.

To install these UC clients requires their respective MSI files.  MSIs allow silent installation by using the “msiexec.exe /qn /i” option.  This installation script will need the following three installation files:

• Communicator.msi: installs Office Communicator 2007
•  LMConsole.msi: installs Live Meeting 2007
• LMAddinPack.msi: installs Outlook Add-on

Office Communicator 2007 requires a license, and is available through Microsoft’s Volume Licensing program; however, the Live Meeting Console and Outlook Add-in is freely available on the web.

The Live Meeting Console is downloadable at: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101733831033.aspx

To silently install the console, the MSI must be extracted from the executable, LMSetup.exe.  To extract the MSI file from the EXE file, run the command:

LMSetup.exe -out <folder path>

This will extract the installer: LMConsole.msi.

The Outlook Add-in is downloadable at: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102368901033.aspx

To silently install the console, the MSI must be extracted from the executable, ConfAddins_Setup.exe.  To extract the MSI file from the EXE file, run the command:

ConfAddins_Setup.exe -out <folder path>

This will extract the installer: LMAddinPack.msi.

Before running the ocinstall.wsh script, you’ll need to make changes to the following section near the beginning of the script to specify your SIP domain name, the network path where you’ll place the three MSI files so the installer script can find them, a URL that will display in Office Communicator where users can go find help, and branding resources.  The example below uses the example of a fictitious organization called contoso.com.

' -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

' SETTINGS THAT MUST BE CONFIGURED BEFORE RUNNING

' -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Organization SIP domain name

Const c_strDomainName = "contoso.com" 

# Network share where the installation files are located

Const c_strRoot = \\server\share\dir\ 

# URL that users can click on within Office Communicator to get help

Const c_strHelpURL = http://help.contoso.com

# Branding resources

Const c_strBranding = "Contoso Unified Communications"

Const c_strBrandingXML = http://contoso.com/branding.xml

 A log file will be generated located in the location: %windir%\logs\OfficeCommunications.log.  Subsequent runs of the installer script will append to the existing log file. The log file can help you determine any installation errors users might possibly experience.

The installer script is available below in the Attachements section. Upon downloading the installer script, rename the extension from TXT to WSH to make it a Windows Scripting Host file.

Happy client rollout!

Rui Maximo

Author – Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit (MSPress)