Creating an Application using an MSI Part 1
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In this lecture, we will create an application using an MSI. An MSI is a Windows Installer.
- Creating an application from an MSI file is probably one of the easiest applications that you can create within Config Manager because most of the installation command line, including parameters, are pre-filled and are part of the MSI.
- Now let’s go ahead and create our application
From the console, click Software Library, then click Application Management, then click Applications, then right-click create application.
From the General screen, we are going to create our deployment type for this application.
- So what is a deployment type? The concept is simple, for example, Lets say we have 100 computers in our office, and we want to deploy the 7-Zip application to all 100 computers. 50 of these computers run Windows 10 64 bit O/S, and the other 50 run Windows 10 the 32 bit version of the O/S. You would create one deployment type for the 64 bit O/S. Then you would go back and create another deployment type for the other 50 computers running Windows 10 32 bit. So in this case, the deployment type is based upon the version of Windows 10.
- In that example, we can create one application, and by creating two deployment types, one for 32 bit windows and one for 64 bit windows, we can successfully deploy that single application to all 100 computers.
That’s the point of deployment types, that an Application can contain multiple deployment types that customize the installation behavior of the application.
- Now we want to choose the default MSI file and browse out to our software location. So in this case, that will be \\SASCCM01\Software\7-zip_msi\7z 1604\7z 1604 x64.
- Now click Open, then click next. If you get a warning that saying the installer file could not be verified that means that the file is not digitally signed. What that means is that 7 zip is open source application. It's pretty common for open source software to not digitally sign their installer files, so I'm just going to click Yes and ignore that error. Now click next
- Here is the General Information for the software application.
This is considered the meta data. This is just information about the software, like theName, Publisher software version. I’ll go ahead and quickly complete this form. This information will be stored in the Configuration Manager Database.
- Notice that the MSI installer has pre-filled the install command line with the /I for install and the /q parameter, which is a quiet install.
- For the Install behavior, click the down arrow and choose Install for system. What this setting does is that the installation will run for all users, even if the user that initiates the installation is not an administrator.
- Now click next , then next again. Now the application creation part has completed. Click close.
- From the console, we see our application, right click and click properties
- From the general screen, we will want to check to allow this application to be installed from a task sequence.
- Now click the Application Catalog
We can add categories, documentation links and the privacy URL, which is the license.txt file for the 7-zip program. Categories help to organize your applications in the clients software center. If you want to create or add a category, just click the edit button.
Now let’s add an icon to the application. Icons dress up the application in the software center. You can get these icons from the msi or use an Icon Extractor like Be-CylconGrabber. Using this program, you can click the msi file then save the icon.
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Got an error with the message saying specify a valid UNC file path.
The path to where the software is shared.