Slack desktop client

[TrotmanRalphCBS]

I'm struggling getting slack desktop client in app stack.   Unfortunately slack runs on the user local profile which is the problem.   I have tried Thinapp'ing and including it in App Stack with odd results.   What's the best way to handle apps that installs in the user profile?

See the slack info

Deploy Slack via Microsoft Installer – Slack Help Center

Thanks

[Smoke14]

You would need to leverage (Writeable Volumes) from App Volumes or UEM.

I would suggest using UEM, cause this product will allow you to manage all aspects of the users persona. You can control what the default settings would be, for SLACK, deployed at login or application launch time for all users or set conditions to apply different settings for different groups of users.

Check it out, if you have not already.  VMware User Environment Manager (UEM)

[TrotmanRalphCBS]

We are also use UEM, so you suggest doing a logon task and just preserve Slack settings via UEM?

[Smoke14]

Create a SLACK application profile by using Profiler tool or manually creating one.

Using the profiler tool will allow you to capture predefined settings.

Mount your SLACK AppStack on a CnB VM and run the profiler utility to launch SLACK and capture all user changes that have been made to that CnB system. Then save the profile to your UEM ...\general\... location to manage and entitle to your user base, through UEM manager console.

Suggestion, I would install the UEM Profiler utility on your CnB VM to leverage creating profiles when your creating your AppStacks to streamline your provisioning process.

[Pim_van_de_Vis]

Slack installs in the Userprofile and can be very large in filesize.

I would recommend to use ThinApp, to capture the application. If that doesn't work, you can also use an AppVolumes Writabel Volume (UIA+profile) to capture the application. Not ideal, but that's the problem Slack created when they build this installer that writes to the userprofile.

If you use a Writabel Volume, I would recommend to edit the snapvol.cfg to exclude as much a possible, and only capture the Slack files. Everything else can still be managed with UEM.

[EricNichols]

I played around with the slack msi installer and learned that all it does is unpack the exe installer and run it and leaves traces in the registry for uninstall. The contained exe installer didnt appear to take any command line input for target dir. It appears that once it is installed to %localappdata% it runs from there but stores the users stuff in %appdata% and the cloud. This suggests that you would be fine with only capturing the %appdata%\slack directory with UEM:

[IncludeFolderTrees]

<AppData>\Slack

[ExcludeFolderTrees]

<AppData>\Slack\temp

<AppData>\Slack\cache

<AppData>\Slack\logs

Maybe Slack did this so that users could use their product without local admin privileges and so that the update mechanism could always keep slack up to date.

Assuming that the systems will be single user non persistant vm's, one trick that worked to have a system wide install is to copy the users %localappdata%\slack and put it in %ProgramFiles(X86)% on the golden image and point any shortcuts to slack.exe in it. Whenever the update.exe runs, it would prompt for elevated credentials but you can just delete update.exe on the golden image. Otherwise, if you continue with the GPO MSI install method, on the users next VM, the msi would run again and recreate what is needed in %localappdata%.

[RhofmanZ]

Hello Ralph,

We use GPO to push the msi. Slack standalone 4.0.0

and use this capture in Vmware UEM (DEM)

# This Flex config file references to the Slack application.

# DirectFlex is configured and enabled (on the DirectFlex tab) to import personal settings
# when slack is launched and to export settings when it is closed.

[IncludeIndividualRegistryValues]
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\com.squirrel.slack.slack

[IncludeFolderTrees]
<AppData>\Slack

[ExcludeFolderTrees]
<AppData>\Slack\temp
<AppData>\Slack\cache
<AppData>\Slack\logs