Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Function

Description

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

System readiness assessment for Office 2010

MAP is an assessment and planning tool targeted at IT Professionals to help them begin the deployment process. The tool inventories your current environment and assesses the readiness of those computers for migration to the new technology, in this case Office 2010. MAP is an agentless tool, this means it can discover the computers in your network without installing any components on the target computers. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments.

Office Environment
Assessment Tool

OEAT assists in the discovery and Office 2010 compatibility of Office Add-ins and interfacing programs

OEAT scans client computers for add-ins and applications that interact with Office 97-2007 Office system, and Office 2010. The tool is designed to be used by IT Pros who are assessing application compatibility as part of their Office 2010 migration planning. The tool now incorporates functionality to compare the discovered add-ins and applications against the list of add-ins that are pledged to be compatible by ISVs who submit them to the Microsoft Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Application Compatibility Visibility Program.

Office Migration and
Planning Manager

Office file readiness assessment and migration tools

OMPM is a tool targeted at IT Pros assisting them to discover and assess compatibility of existing Office documents for migration from the binary document formats (Office 97-2003:.doc, .xls, etc.) to OpenXML formats (Office 2007 & newer:.docx, .xlsx, etc.). Additionally OMPM 2010 adds features to assess macro compatibility with Office 2010 and 64 bit Office compatibility. The toolkit also contains the Office File Converter (OFC) which enables bulk document conversions from binary to OpenXML formats.

Office Code Compatibility Inspector

OCCI provides guidance to a Office developer to remediate VBA code

OCCI is an add-in developers can use in Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, Microsoft Word 2010, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to troubleshoot and resolve potential issues with Microsoft Visual Basic for Application (VBA) Macros and add-ins. The tool helps guide a developer in remediating issues in VBA code to expedite migration to Office 2010. The tool scans code in a project for known compatibility issues, and then notifies you if it finds items in the code from the object model that have changed in some way or have been removed.

Office Customization tool

OCT enables IT Pros to consistently customize the installation of Office

The OCT is part of the Setup program and is the recommended tool for most customizations. OCT allows IT Pros to maintain a standard set of customizations for deployment including:
Setup(install location, licensing, etc.), Features (control locally installed components), additional content(add/remove files and registry keys), and Outlook configuration. The OCT is available only with volume licensed versions of Office 2010 and the 2007 Office system. OCT is used to maintain Office deployment customizations – this only applies during initial deployment. Using the OCT to configure user settings establishes the initial default values for the settings. Users can modify most of the settings after Office is installed. If you want to enforce user settings, use Group Policy.

Config.xml
(Included in VL products)

Used to control install tasks for Office

Config.xml is used by IT Pros to further customize the Office installation. OCT is the primary customization tool, however config.xml can be used to further the customization and contains a few unique options. Config.xml is typically leveraged to install multiple languages and to setup a local install cache.

Microsoft Deployment
Toolkit

Common console to manage OS and application customization and deployments

MDT is the recommended process and toolset for automating Windows 7 and Office 2010 deployments. MDT 2010 Update 1 supports Office 2010 and readily exposes the Office customization options – including OCT and Config.xml. MDT can be used to combine Office installation with an OS deployment or build a task sequence to install applications only. MDT readily provides the infrastructure to reliably chain additional installation packages, such as interactive guides, add-ins, etc. MDT provides LTI deployment or it can be partnered with SCCM to facilitate ZTI.

User State Migration Tool

USMT scans a destination desktop and migrates user settings to new target image

USMT supports migrating user settings including user data and support application data. Office is one of the supported applications by USMT.

Compatibility Pack

Component is required by OMPM to perform file conversions

Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the Open XML file formats, which were introduced to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint beginning with Office 2007 and continuing with Office 2010. Existing installations of the compatibility pack were updated via update service

Office 2010
Deployment Kit for App-V

Deployment kit enables sequencing and deployment of Office 2010 with Microsoft App-V

The deployment kit is not a traditional tool but rather a kit of components to enable Office license activation and enablement of key virtual proxies to allow proper local system integration.

Office 2010 Security Guide

End-to-end solution to help you plan, deploy, and monitor the security configuration for Office 2010

OSG 2010 is delivered via the Security Compliance Manager tool. This enables customers to take advantage of the experience of Microsoft security professionals, and reduce the time and money required to harden the environment. This end-to-end Solution Accelerator will help you plan, deploy, operate, and manage your security baselines. Access the complete database of Microsoft recommended security settings, customize your baselines, and then choose from multiple formats—including Desired Configuration Management (DCM) packs, Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP), XLS, or Group Policy objects (GPOs)—to export the baselines to your environment to automate the security baseline compliance verification process. Use Security Compliance Manager to achieve a secure, reliable, and centralized IT environment that will help you better balance your organization’s needs for security and functionality.

Group Policy Admin templates

Office templates provide IT Pros the ability to enforce configuration policies

Admin templates provide several thousand potential configuration options IT Pros can leverage to further customize Office even after installation and primarily enforce policies in the Office applications. Some settings are policy enforced while others are user preferences only.

Office 2010 KMS Host Activation Pack

Volume activation in Office 2010 now aligns with Windows activation using KMS or MAK activation methods

KMS activates the computers, or KMS clients, from a KMS host server that contains a KMS host key that is supplied by Microsoft. This method replaces direct activation through Microsoft, and gives the local administrator control of the process. KMS activation is generally suggested for customers planning to activate 50 or connected client computers.

Sharepoint Service Configuration

Several collaboration features for Office 2010 are controlled by configurations on the SharePoint server.

Office Web Apps
Powerpoint Broadcast
Co-Authoring Administration
Excel Services Administration
InfoPath Forms Administration
Access Service Administration

Interactive Guides

(Also “Learn where Menu & Commands are in Office 2010”)

Menu and toolbar guides

These interactive guides show you where your favorite menu and toolbar commands are located in Office 2010. Just click the command or button that you want to find and the guide will show you its location in the 2010 version of the program. The locally installable versions are available for local installation by IT Pros at or before Office 2010 deployment.