{"id":2332,"date":"2015-08-19T07:36:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T11:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/?p=2332"},"modified":"2015-08-19T07:59:21","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T11:59:21","slug":"adobe-acrobat-reader-dc-and-app-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/?p=2332","title":{"rendered":"Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and App-V"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
Just where the heck is StealthPuppy<\/a> when you need him? Somebody has to talk about Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and App-V. At times it has been hard to sequence Adobe Reader, but these days you can almost do it while sleeping.\u00a0\u00a0OK, so I’ll take a shot at writing about it because old posts make it sound so hard.<\/td>\n\u00a0\u00a0\"Photo
\nPhoto by Michelle MeikleJohn.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

First off, let’s be clear that I am talking about the free product, not the Pro version. And my buddy Nicke Kallen wrote about the full Adobe Acrobat XI version recently here<\/a>, so maybe he’ll tackle the DC Pro version next.<\/p>\n

Second, I will mention that I think you would be nuts to think about putting it on Windows 10. While I hated Microsoft’s embedded pdf reader on Windows 8.1, the Windows 10 version\u00a0is pretty good for most purposes. Especially in the Edge browser where you don’t get plug-ins anyway. But most of you are still\u00a0interested in getting apps on all of those Windows 7 machines, so here it goes.<\/p>\n

Adobe has gotten pretty good at deployment options lately. And they have been doing a great job of working with the App-V team at Microsoft, so there aren’t any big issues in sequencing it. But how about some steps of what to do?<\/p>\n

Get a Distribution Agreement<\/h3>\n

If you want to distribute Reader, or a handful of other Adobe products, inside your company you are supposed to apply for a distribution agreement<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 This is a pretty simple process.\u00a0 You fill in a web form and a short while later you get an email back.\u00a0 But in addition to making you legal, the email also gets you access to the full downloadable installers.\u00a0 You want to download those.<\/p>\n

Get the Customization Wizard for Adobe Reader DC<\/h3>\n

Just go to the Adobe site and search for it.\u00a0 This tool makes it easy to customize the Reader installer before you get to the sequencer.\u00a0 Just be sure to get the copy for the version of Reader that you intend to sequence.<\/p>\n

Customize the Installer<\/h3>\n

I prefer to start the process on a clean sequencer – but only because I know that it is a clean machine.\u00a0 We’ll revert the machine before sequencing so it is OK to dirty it.<\/p>\n

Install the CustomizationWizard installer.\u00a0 Start it up.\u00a0 It is built with a ton of documentation on the process, so you might not need this guide, but if you want a simple step-by-step without having to think, read on here…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The documentation explains that you should start by unpacking the exe based installer they supply to get at the MSI files inside.\u00a0 The instructions didn’t work for me (possibly outdated for the DC version) so here is what I did. I downloaded a copy of 7zip and installed that on the sequencer (you could also use any other tool that can crack open an exe installer). Open the file and extract the contents out into a folder on the desktop.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You will find both an msi, the installer for the major version, and a msp patch installer.\u00a0 The latter changes on the minor updates.\u00a0 We will use the Customization tool to\u00a0work just with the MSI and create a MST transform file that can be applied.<\/p>\n

Using the Customization Wizard tool, open up the msi file (don’t worry about the warning in the documentation about starting in another folder, we don’t care).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On the left hand side is a menu for customization areas.\u00a0 Clicking on one will scroll the documentation window to the appropriate page.\u00a0 Some pretty good detail is there to explain things, so I’ll just cover the things you most likely want to change.<\/p>\n

On the Personalization Options<\/strong>, most packagers will want to accept the EULA once now and not bother end users with it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On the Installation Options<\/strong> you may want some changes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I prefer to make the software the default reader.<\/li>\n
  2. I also want to uncheck the Enable Optimization<\/em> feature as I don’t want defragmentation on the sequencer.<\/li>\n
  3. I used to\u00a0let the installer cache in the package for possible self-repair, but since App-V 5 won’t let executable components be written to, you are better off unchecking that box.<\/li>\n
  4. I set the Run Installation<\/em> setting to Unattended, but that is a personal choice.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    The\u00a0Files and Folders<\/strong> is one where you probably don’t have to do anything.\u00a0 There are some vc runtime files that will be installed if not present on the system, but App-V will have those covered so they won’t appear in the package.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    Similarly, you might not need to do anything on the Registry<\/strong> page.\u00a0 The exception would be when you find it easier to install and configure the product first, then extract the registry settings.\u00a0 Sometimes that is an easier way to make sure you get things like the security settings right.\u00a0 If you do that, just add the entries on this page.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    On the Shortcuts<\/strong> page of the wizard, you probably want to remove the desktop from the shortcut (right click on the shortcut and select remove).<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Skip the Server Location<\/strong> page unless you know that you need to add something here.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    Do something on the Security<\/strong> page.\u00a0 Setting up the security options is really important at some companies, others will just skip this page.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    If you\u00a0skipped over the Security page, skip over\u00a0the Digital Signature\u00a0<\/strong>page also.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    I’m sure some customers care about the WebMail Profiles<\/strong>, but suspect that those customers are using the Pro version.\u00a0 If you don’t know why you want to make a change here, move on.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    On the Online Service and Features<\/strong> page, I start to grumble. The idea behind DC version is that you can do a lot more than just read PDFs.\u00a0 But all of those other things are online, cloud based services.\u00a0 And you have to pay for them.\u00a0 The Pro version includes all of them, but users can purchase a subscription to just what they need, like convert a PDF to Word, rather than the whole suite for something like $2\/month.<\/p>\n

    While it might seem that doing\u00a0checking the to\u00a0Disable<\/em>\u00a0checkboxes (1 and 3, below) might get rid of this, it unfortunately does not.\u00a0 If you want to eliminate those features you probably need to find an older Adobe Reader to install instead.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    The Comments and Forms<\/strong>\u00a0page covers those features.\u00a0 If you select the Auto Complete option, keeping the Remember<\/em> checkbox unchecked for numeric fields is a good idea to prevent the user from accidentally storing PII\u00a0data like phone, account, and social security numbers in their profile.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    The File Attachments<\/strong> page is interesting.\u00a0 The defaults are probably fine, but it shows how Adobe has had to react to exploits allowing executable components to find their way into PDF files.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    Edit the Launch Office Applications\u00a0<\/strong>page if you need this integration, which is rare.\u00a0 If you need this, you should probably have installed office before running this wizard.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    On the Other Settings<\/strong> page, you can set this feature to save ink when printing PDFs.\u00a0 Adobe seems to think this is a good idea, but it is just another reason for a help desk call.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    The Direct Edit<\/strong>or<\/strong> page allows you to directly edit the MSI tables.\u00a0 You probably don’t need to.<\/p>\n

    One example where you might chose to is to disable the arm updater service.\u00a0 We already disabled the updater, but making sure the\u00a0back-end service is set to disabled will reduce some overhead.\u00a0 Just set DISABLE_ARM_SERVICE to the value 1 is one way, but setting the StartType to the ServiceInstall table entry (shown below) to disabled is another.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    I’m sure there are a bunch of other things you can do to tweak the installed package further, but this covers the basics. When you are happy, it is time to save off.<\/p>\n

    You don’t need to do this, but I used the Transform<\/strong> menu to save off the MST file.\u00a0I named it AppV and just placed it in the same folder.\u00a0 Technically, it is possible to create individual Transforms to set individual items, and then chain the MSTs together in the combinations you need.\u00a0 While an interesting concept, it probably isn’t worth the hassle and you should just have one MST to link in.<\/p>\n

    What you should do is what I did next. I used the File<\/strong> menu and saved in the same folder also.\u00a0 This created an mst file with the same name as the msi, plus it\u00a0also edited the setup.ini file, so you won’t have to remember the syntax to run the msi with the msp and mst on a single command line.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    Here are the updated files.\u00a0 I’m not sure what the .ref file\u00a0is, but it causes no harm.
    \n\"\"<\/p>\n

    Save off this folder as your customized installer.\u00a0 You’ll want to pop it up to a network share as you’ll then revert the sequencer.<\/p>\n

    Sequencing<\/h3>\n

    The Sequencing is pretty straight forward at this point!\u00a0 Between pre-customizing the installer, and the great work done between the Adobe and App-V development teams, we don’t have issues today.<\/p>\n

    You don’t need to PVAD the installer.\u00a0 Just run the setup.exe without arguments when in monitoring mode and your administrative install will complete without further input.\u00a0 \u00a0I suppose you could set operating systems and not pick Windows 10, but otherwise no special settings or edits should be necessary, just save off the package.<\/p>\n

    Caveats<\/h3>\n

    The Application Capabilities feature of the installer requires publishing globally, but you can probably live with hard coding of Reader DC as the default for pdfs.<\/p>\n

    To get the benefits of browser integration, the browser must run in the virtual environment.\u00a0 Without this, when the user clicks on a PDF on a web page, Reader DC will open as a separate application and window to display the PDF; with this the PDF displays inside the browser window using the COM interface connected via browser plugin.\u00a0 Connection Groups and\/or RunVirtual is recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Just where the heck is StealthPuppy when you need him? Somebody has to talk about Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and App-V. At times it has been hard to sequence Adobe Reader, but these days you can almost do it while sleeping.\u00a0\u00a0OK, so I’ll take a shot at writing about it because old posts make it… Continue reading Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and App-V<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,48],"tags":[43,31,13],"class_list":["post-2332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appv5","category-sequencing","tag-adobe","tag-appv5","tag-sequencing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2332"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2346,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions\/2346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tmurgent.com\/TmBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}