Software Deployment

Well, that wasn't the question you asked.we must advertise the applications for users to install themselvesCan I suggest you do some reading of your own, as advertising applications in SCCM is covered rather well by the documentation. Note that SCCM package advertising is completely different to advertising by Windows Installer packages. Note also that Windows Installer MSIs are commonly referred to as 'packages' but this again is a different use of the term. You wanted consistency in terminology from Microsoft?

If, however, advertising is NOT what you want, you should set up the (SCCM) program to only deploy when users are logged in and that it interacts with the desktop. Personally, I'd extract the MSIs and use those with a suitable transform. Then you could use your preferred qualifier for the '/Q' argument to MSIExec.EXE, i.e. '/QB' for a basic UI, or '/QR' for a reduced UI, when building your command line.

As an aside, if your developers - is there any other audience for VS? - are that stupid that they continually click a button until they see something happen, you should perhaps politely suggest that they seek career alternatives.

Are your users that desperate to get VS that they want to follow its installation second-by-second? Deploy it overnight and it'll be there when they log in next morning.

Thanks for answering (not!). If I was asking for advice on how and when to advertise the app I would have asked that question ...... but I didn't. Either learn to read or don't bother. Apologies for the rant but your response was completely useless.

The reasoning behind the request is because we have been told we must advertise the applications for users to install themselves, therefore the need to know where the installation is so that users dont just reboot whilst the install is running. We all know that users will just keep clicking the install button if they can't see that it's running.

Cheers

Just came across this, but you might consider setting each component up as a separate installation and then set up a task sequence that installs each component separately. When you advertise the task sequence the users can see each step of the installation.