EV Outlook Add-in on Windows 2008 x64 Terminal Server

Whilst it is not officially supported, I'd like to share my recent testing with the EV 8 SP 2 Outlook Add-in on a Windows 2008 x64 Terminal Server.  Hopefully the steps will allow other people to try this neat way of accessing Outlook + archived items.  The super-neat way is in the configuration and usage of RemoteApp, it gives you Citrix style sharing of the Outlook app right on to the end-users desktop.

Add Terminal Services roles.

From Server Manager console, click on Roles, then Add Roles.  In the dialog that appears tick the box for Terminal Services :

Proceed through the wizard and tick the boxes for Terminal Server, and TS Web Access.  When you click on TS Web Access additional role pre-requisites will be listed, accept those.

Tick the box for “Do not require Network Level Authentication”.  For licensing choose the default of “Configure Later” this will give you 120 days of grace to sort out licensing of terminal services.

You can then choose who can connect to the terminal server.  I added Enterprise\Domain Users.  You will then go through the IIS role pre-reqs which you can accept the defaults to.  Finally you’ll be able to install.  At the end you’ll be prompted to restart the server.  Installation will complete after the restart of the server.

Install Office 2007 Enterprise

It has to be Enterprise Edition.  If you do not install Enterprise Edition, and instead you install Professional, when a terminal service user tries to run (say) Microsoft Word, they will get a pop-up like this :

It’s described in this article : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924622

If you install Enterprise Edition, you don’t get that.  Enterprise Edition by default prevents a bunch of things happening, such as :

•    You can’t enable cached mode in Outlook.

More information is here : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/magazine/2008.0..., http://blog.stealthpuppy.com/deployment/installing...

Install the EV Outlook Add-in

I used EV 8 SP 2, just run the MSI as normal.

Enable VBScript

By default in Enterprise Edition VBScript for Outlook is not installed.  If you do not enable it then when a user of Outlook tries to open an archived item, they will get this sort of pop-up.

This will appear if you’re running a later SP 3 build of our client extensions, prior to that you would get :

To enable VBScript I used the following :

You can’t enable it in Terminal Services using Add/Remove programs, so you have to follow this :-

http://support.veritas.com/docs/273140

Or this :-

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302003

Remember in x64 you have to look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node...

I ran :-

C:\Users\administrator.EV>msiexec /i {90120000-0030-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE} ADDLOCAL=OutlookVBScript /qb

Publish Outlook as a RemoteApp

If you open the Remote App manager console, you can add a RemoteApp program :
 

Just click on Add RemoteApp Programs and walk through the wizard and choose Outlook from the list of applications.  You don’t have to specifically add the EV Outlook Add-in.

More on RemoteApp can be found here : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753844(WS.10).aspx

Build an MSI for clients

To build an MSI for clients to use, click on the RemoteApp program that was added above, if you right click it you have various options including building an MSI.

Install the MSI on a client machine

If you share out the location on the server that you built the MSI then any client with permissions can browse to that network folder, and run the MSI.  After doing so they will have a “Remote Programs” program folder containing Outlook.

Launch “Remote Programs” Outlook

When you do this for the first time you are walked through the normal Outlook profile creation process.  After that when you launch Outlook you will have a projection of it from the server, it won’t be running locally.    One thing to note is that according to :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753844(WS.10).aspx

You need to be running XP SP 3, Vista SP 1 or Windows 2008 versions of Remote Desktop client software in order to launch the RemoteApp.

Check out http://yourserver/ts

That’s another way of accessing the RemoteApp or the full terminal server.