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FLEXnet AdminStudio
Professional 7.0 by Bob Kelly |
In this latest release we see the
first of feature that integrate with existing Macrovision products (FLEXwrap),
and AdminStudio 7 has dropped the
InstallShield name for its new branding as part of the FLEXnet line of products.
The InstallShield name remains as a product name for Macrovision’s developer-focused products
(currently, "InstallShield 11"). Both products integrate with a
separate offering: the
FLEXnet AdminStudio Workflow Manager (now in its v3 release). This separate
product provides a web-based interface to managing package requests and package
development. As you would expect the integration is very tight, tied to your
AdminStudio workflow processes.
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FLEXnet AdminStudio
Professional 7.0 by Bob Kelly |
Installation
You
can perform a complete, client-only, or custom installation. The first and last
options should be quite familiar to anyone reading this, but the client-only
installation may be worth elaborating on: This option eliminates the installation of
Predeployment Test Reporting and the SMS Web Console, which are web based tools
that require IIS and the .NET framework be present on the machine. In fact, if
you choose “complete” and these conditions are not met, it will simply warn you
that the installation will exclude these items automatically.
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FLEXnet AdminStudio
Professional 7.0 by Bob Kelly |
Layout
The Assistant tab takes you through package
creation steps with its “Process Assistant” –
by guiding you through the necessary tasks to create a custom package based on
the type of file you select. If you choose an MSI, you are presented with steps
to customize the MSI with a transform. Whereas if you select an executable file, you are
first presented with
steps to repackage and customize the setup into an MSI file. Though this is a great concept, you will still need to take
care when working with executables because the process assistant bases its
recommendations solely on the setup file extension and does not look further to
determine if it is a wrapped MSI (very common with Internet distributions). This
is even the case when the setup is an InstallShield wrapped MSI and is something
I would really like to see added as an enhancement in the future. Finally, the Workflow Templates tab offers many built in process templates, as well as an ability to create and customize your own workflow templates...
For example, the “Package Evaluation” workflow template shown above provides a helpful path for evaluating a package for your environment. A tool, help file and any notes you care to include may optionally be associated with each step in the workflow.
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