Office 2010-ThinApp Updating

[Schraeger]

I keep going round and round on this topic.

I have Thinapp versions of Office Pro and Standard which have been working well.  Now we are trying to update the package.  Since the updater (Windows Update) is outside of the package SBMERGE is not going to work.  I tried using a cmd endpoint for the package and apply the MSP files through the cmd endpoint but I keep getting an error about not being able to access MSIexec.  I have placed all my updates in the updates folder in the office setup directory and can repackage Office but If I try to do that I get Office activation issues.  I think this is becasue of the Sandbox, becasue if I blow away the sandbox the re-packaged Office works well.  The issue with blowing away the sandbox is the users will loose all their Outlook settings.

Does anyone have any real world experiance around updating a Thinapp Office installation?

[Schraeger]

Anyone?

[solgaeDK]

I never found a way to successfully apply MSI/MSP packages within the virtual bubble. So we have two choices:

1. Re-package Office 2010 with the new updates installed. This is obviously more work, but at least you can assure that all the patches are in place. You can then use AppSync or side-by-side update mechanism to deploy the new package. I highly suggest you make a capture on the VM with a clean install of the OS, and after installing updates and right before post-scan, shut down the VM and take a snapshot. That way, you can roll back to the point right before the post-scan, and you can install additional updates while ThinApp is still in capture mode. The downside to this approach is that you need to re-apply all the tunings done after postscan once you roll back the snapshot to include additional updates.

2. Use Applink to include ThinApp packages that includes just the patches. This requires that the parent package is built with the Required/OptionalAppLinks parameter set at the package.ini. Once the parent package is built with this parameter, you can fire another pre-scan while office 2010 is already installed on the capture VM, install the patches, and then postscan it. This will create a package that includes just the components that are included with the patches, and you can use AppLink to "apply" the patches to the parent package. The downside to this approach is that this can cause the user sandbox to grow larger due to the Merge.*.tvr file created on the sandbox for each "patch" package, and you need to make sure there are no isolation conflicts between the parent package and the applinked package(s) - in a nutshell, the most restrictive one will always win, and the child contents will take precedence over parent contents. I would also point out that AppLink is not designed to be a "patching" mechanism, so you would be using a feature that is not intended to serve this type of role, and there is no easy way to ensure both the parent package and the AppLink-ed packages are deployed together.

solgae,