Office 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2008 R2 Templates Released

The merged Microsoft Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010 template files have been uploaded to the Virtual Engine website and are available for download in the Templates section. Each .ZIP file contains all the office templates for each product edition, e.g. Standard, Small Business and Professional etc, making it easy for you to configure settings for multiple Office products in a single policy within the RES Workspace Manager management console.

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In addition, all the standard Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 administrative templates have been merged into a single file and is also available in the same place (as the Office templates). Using this template enables you configure all the standard Group Policy Administrative Template settings in a single Registry Policy within the RES Workspace Manager management console too. It takes a little while to expand the file due to the number of settings (it is all 156 ADMX files merged into 1!), but does mean that the console looks less cluttered. Here is what it looks like:

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All these files were put together with the Virtual Engine Toolkit (VET) so if they don’t meet your individual requirements you can always download the tool and “roll your own”. Note: a new BETA 3 version will be released in the near future that fixes a few reported bugs and sports a couple of new features too..

Enjoy! Iain

Migrating GPOs to RES Workspace Manager (Part 5)

Deploying new GPOs via RES Workspace Manager is incredibly simple. Unfortunately, as was highlighted in Migrating GPOs to RES PowerFuse (Part 1), it can be messy due to each RES Workspace Manager registry policy can only being based on a single ADM or ADMX/ADML file. A single Office GPO (if implemented via RES Workspace Manager registry policies) could look like this:

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Opening the ACCESS14.ADM policy within the RES Workspace Manager Management Console only provides us with the ability to control the Access 2010 settings, e.g.

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If we need to apply different settings for different users then we have to duplicate the required ADM/X policies and assign the access control as required. Over time this becomes increasingly hard to manage. With the updated Beta 2 release of the Virtual Engine Toolkit (VET) we can merge ADM files or ADMX/L files into a single file. This enables more effective use of RES Workspace Manager registry policies rather than having lots and lots individual policies. This in turn means a more simple model of administration and control. Note: it is still recommended that registry policies be applied at the application level rather than globally. The example used here is for demonstration only!

The Virtual Engine Toolkit will only extract and merge the “USER CLASS” and “[Strings]” entries within the ADM files. It does not merge the “CLASS MACHINE” entries in any way. Once you’ve downloaded the Virtual Engine Toolkit (registration is required), fire it up and navigate to the “Merge ADMs” tab.

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Once you have the “Merge ADMs” tab open, perform the following:

  1. Drag’n’drop all the required ADM files into the top box.
  2. Select your file output location.
  3. Specify the filename (no need to append .ADM as the Toolkit will do this for you).
  4. Click the Toolkit button in the bottom right.

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If all goes well then you should see something like this signifying that everything worked OK:

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The “Merged_ADMs.adm” file can now be uploaded into RES Workspace Manager directly (it might have been better to call the merged ADM something like “Office2010.adm”!)

Now when we edit the the Merged_ADMs.adm registry policy it should look a little more intuitive! It’s a lot easier to manage settings for various groups of users when all settings are in one place. Remember that we can also do this with ADMX/L files too (in Part 6).

In the RES Workspace Manager Management Console all the settings are in one place and now look like this:

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