PowerShell Application wrapper for Standalone,MDT and SCCM

Update 2018-04-23: Due to issues with download and for better tracking the script has been moved to github. Link at the bottom of the post.

Update 2016-08-02: Someone asked, could it not be possible to run external vbs and ps1 scripts as well. Well hat has now been fixed and the new version is available for download.
Current versions support the following installertypes, EXE/MSI/MSP/VBS/PS1. Happy deploying!

My good friend “The Deployment Bunny” did a while back a nice script to install Internet Explorer 11 into a ref image. I now needed a nice way to deploy other applications using the same principle and way to deliver this to customers.
The problem now is most don’t want to edit the script every time a new application should be used. To sort this out the script uses a settings.xml file to specify the needed parameters.
The XML in itself is a short simple one as can be seen below.

<xml>
<Application>
<Name>Oracle Java <InstallerName>jre-8u40-windows-i586.exe</InstallerName>
<InstallerType>EXE</InstallerType>
<InstallSwitches>/s</InstallSwitches>
</Application>
</xml>

Now all that has to be changed for this to work with other applications is the Name, the file to run and the install switches. If you change to run a MSI instead just change installertype to MSI.
The folder structure for it to work needs to look like this and the install files is then place inside the Source folder.

This can then either be run by simply running the PowerShell script from the folder or by calling on it from inside SCCM or MDT. The Install command from MDT and SCCM is then “cmd /c PowerShell.exe –ExecutionPolicy ByPass –File install-applications.ps1”
If you run this inside of MDT or SCCM and in a Task sequence the logging will be done to the relevant logfolders used by MDT and SCCM.

The script can and a sample settings.xml can be downloaded from here on github

Happy deploying!

Office 2016 Preview – Downloading missing cab files

So I have downloaded the Office 2016 Preview and installed it. It all works fine until you do setup.exe /download configuration.xml

Now the fun starts, the download in it self will work and download the Office CAB files. Well almost. It download some of them but not all.

After some digging I found that missing ones, which do exists on the office365 download site but are not getting downloaded during the pre download phase.

The fix is easy just download the needed files and place them in the Cache folder and you can now install it with local files.

Since I don’t like manual labor downloading x number of file manually is out and PowerShell is in. I created a small script that will download all the required files and place them in the folder specified by the confuigration.xml file. Note that this will require you to modify the configuration file so they are saved locally.

Place the script in the same folder as setup.exe, modify an existing xml file to use a local store or create a new one specifying the settings you want to.

Run the script down Download-Office.ps1 –settingsfile Custom.xml this will then use run the setup.exe and download the files it can, place them in the folder specified by custom.xml and then run the powershell bits around it and download the missing files.

The script also has an –install flag than can be used to install office using the same xml file. Note that it will download the files first and then run the install from the local files (if you don’t want to do and online install). It is not intended to be used as a replacement for the normal
setup.exe install.

The script can be found here http://bit.ly/1TAeWNW