Software Deployment

I don't know the specifics of how those applications author MSIs so I can't give much insight however as long as one of the files is a key path it shoud work alright. You should be able to author the MSI to install to My Documents and as long as the MSI is deployed at the correct time it will redirect to the network. The only time it might not is if you install at logon via active directory and the folders have not yet been redirected to the network. There is a way to work around that issue as well but it means more group policies.

This folder doesn't need to have anything in it, it's just for user data files. Does it need to have a file in it, so I can make it a key file?

I'm installing pre-logon, but not via AD. It's a similar mechanism though I think.

I use script to do this, so have a small vbs script that checks for folders existence, creates the folder, then runs the app. point the icon at the vbs not the exe

Hi DuncanPaul,

Yeah I was leaving that as a last resort. I'm sure it's possible to do it from the MSI, I've seen apps like MS Office and Paintshop Pro create folders in a user's Mydocs by running a self-heal upon launch.

I think it's probably safe to ignore the fact that it would need to write to a network share, as the my docs directly redirects to the network share.

So just need to figure out how to make the MSI write to MyDocs. Is it something to do with making the folder a key path?

Thanks

You can make a component with a folder in it. I cannot set it as a key path so I don't think it will self heal.

As long as 'My Documents' points to that network drive and there's a related key file in your MSI file, it should repair whenever that user launches the application and the files aren't there.