IT Pro Tips for Glencoe Teacherworks 1

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2

Note

Some information on how I've packaged TeacherWorks such that it requires no CD's to be inserted into the CD/DVD drives at runtime.

1. Teacherworks looks here to see what packs are installed:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\TeacherWorks\COURSES

On Vista, it seems like due to a split in how the All Users profile gets treated, all the COURSES files end up under:

c:\ProgramData\Documents\teacherworks\COURSES

Which, Teacherworks seems to hardcode the first path, causing it not to see any installed data.

Fortunately, after it doesn't find the COURSES folder underneath its expected location, it will look for a local COURSES folder under:

c:\Program Files\Common Files\Teacherworks\COURSES

So this is trivial to change how we install the course files.

There's a unique file in this root and a unique folder under DATA that signifies the installed pack.

2. After Teacherworks determines that a particular pack is installed it actually iterates through the root of all drives on the system in alphabetical order looking for:

c:\Media\BetainstD:\Media\Betainstetc.

And then links against other subfolders under Media when 'Betainst' is found. Evidently the presence of this folder is adequate to determine that a 'CD' is 'Inserted' where the Betainst folder is found. Even though 'Title.txt' appears to indicate which disk is inserted, this information apparently is not used.

3. Using this information, you can in theory package up the uniquely named files from both the Media and COURSES folders from. As well as making an MSI installer for the Teacherworks runtime itself. The end experience will be:

--Deploy the Teacherworks Runtime MSI package
--Determine the Teacherworks Package to be deployed
--Load up the TeacherworksRepackagingTemplate.ism in InstallShield
--Change the Product Name, Product Code of the template, and ensure that the Dynamic File Links point to your CD drive.
--Build the project
--Deploy the resultant MSi to install the course files pack to the machine with the already installed Teacherworks Runtime package.
--Run Teacherworks, and select the appropriate course package.

4. Finally, to avoid removing Title.txt file during uninstall, all files installed to 'betainst' folder have been marked as 'Permanent' and 'Never Overwrite'.

If it is a requirement to remove these when the runtime and all course packages are removed, then this would be fairly simple to accomplish via further script code. Otherwise, this needs to remain present as an index of what course packs are installed on the system.

Setup Information:

Setup Type: unspecified

Deployment Method Used: unspecified

Deployment Difficulty: unspecified

Platform(s): Windows

habeebtc
01/26/2010
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1

Virtualization

When running under AppV, I found it necessary to move the 'DB' folder from:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\TeacherWorks\User\DB

To:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\TeacherWorks\DB

Otherwise a script error occurred indicating that there was no valid handler.

Setup Information:

Setup Type: unspecified

Deployment Method Used: unspecified

Deployment Difficulty: unspecified

Platform(s): Windows

habeebtc
01/26/2010
Show Comments ( 0 )

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