Windows enterprise apps FAQs

Frequently asked questions about Windows enterprise apps.

What is silent installation mode?

When an app is marked for silent installation, the app is automatically installed on target devices without user interaction and the installation program does not display a user interface.

What is the behavior on target devices when an app is marked for both silent and instant install?

The possible combinations for silent installs versus instant installs are described in the following table:
  Instant Install On Instant Install Off
Silent installation Installs the app without any user intervention. User initiates the unattended installation from the App Catalog.
UI or wizard-based Prompts the app installation wizard to allow users to manually install the app. User installs the app from the App Catalog manually.

Examples of silent install commands:

App Commands
Evernote
Execution commands
  • Silent install command: %APPNAME%.exe /quiet
  • Silent uninstall command: MsiExec.exe /X{DFDF0BE2-2D71-11E4-9454-00163E98E7D6} /qn
Install success criteria
  • Registry
    • Key path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{DFDF0BE2-2D71-11E4-9454-00163E98E7D6}
    • Value name: DisplayName
    • Value data: Evernote v. 5.6.4
  • File exists: C:\Program Files (x86)\Evernote\Evernote\Evernote.exe
  • Process running: Evernote.exe
VLC
Execution commands
  • Silent install command: %APPNAME%.exe /S
  • Silent uninstall command: {7C5A40EF-A0FB-4BFC-874A-C0F2E0B9FA8E}\VideoLAN\VLC\uninstall.exe
Install success criteria
  • Registry
    • Key path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products\50E7C3A773EE6D74991EE20BA5D33A7F
    • Value name: DisplayName
    • Value data: VLC media player
  • File exists: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe
  • Process running: vlc.exe
Skype
Execution commands
  • Silent install command: %APPNAME%.exe /S
  • Silent uninstall command: MsiExec.exe /X{1845470B-EB14-4ABC-835B-E36C693DC07D} /qn
Install success criteria
  • Registry
    • Key path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products\50E7C3A773EE6D74991EE20BA5D33A7F
    • Value name: ProductName
    • Value data: Skype 6.16
  • File exists: C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe
  • Process running: Skype.exe

What are the suggested storage and bandwidth settings for adding a Windows package in MaaS360?

The following suggestions are the standard storage capacities that you can use to add MaaS360 packages/bundles:
  • 1 GB storage
  • 6 GB bandwidth utilization per device on average over a 12 month period
Organizations can purchase additional storage space and bandwidth by sending a request to their MaaS360 Account Management team. Account management can order the following parts:
  • D1AJKLL - IBM MaaS360 Content Service Bandwidth (SaaS) Gigabyte per Month
  • D1AJHLL - IBM MaaS360 Content Service Storage (SaaS) Gigabyte per Month
Even though the MaaS360 Content Distribution Network can download large files and install apps, you might consider the following issues:
  • Do I really want to download a 3 GB payload to all my devices across the internet?
  • Do any of my locations have a small bandwidth pipe?
  • Are my devices localized or distributed across the country?
  • Do I have a local file share that I can use instead?

If you have a large amount of devices that are centralized in a specific location, you might want to consider creating a small application that executes commands to download the package from a local file server instead of executing the installation of the package. For example, create a batch file to download the payload from a server, and then run the setup.exe program.

Which installation context should I choose?

You can install packages as the local system or the user:
  • If you want MaaS360 to silently install the package by default as the local system, MaaS360 has the proper permissions to install the software.
  • If you want MaaS360 to use the UI/Wizard based Install, by default the package is installed as the user who is accessing the MaaS360 App Catalog for Windows. Make sure that the user has the proper permissions to install the software (some software requires admin rights) or the installation will fail.

Example of commands that pull larges file from the local server

For this example, you might have a few Office 365 applications that are hosted in an internal share location. The following commands can help you pull these files from the local share location onto a device. The commands are packaged in an executable program that is pushed from the MaaS360 App Catalog to your device. The following commands download a package from the internal Windows File Share server:
  • cmd.exe /C mkdir "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010"
  • xcopy /y "\\Servername\Sharename\Office 2010\Admin" "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\Admin" /s /i
  • xcopy /y "\\Servername\Sharename \Office 2010\OneNote.en-us" "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\OneNote.en-us" /s /i
  • xcopy /y "\\Servername\Sharename \Office 2010\Outlook.en-us" "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\Outlook.en-us" /s /i
  • xcopy /y "\\Servername\Sharename \Office 2010\PowerPoint.en-us" "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\PowerPoint.en-us" /s /i
  • xcopy /y "\\Servername\Sharename \Office 2010\Proofing.en-us" "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\Proofing.en-us " /s /i
  • xcopy /y "\\Servername\Sharename \Office 2010\ProPlus.en-us" "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\ProPlus.en-us " /s /i
  • xcopy /y "\\Servername\Sharename \Office 2010\Publisher.en-us" "C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\Publisher.en-us" /s /i

You can also use registry entries in a batch process to track the regset "[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SWD-OFF-Batch1]" "value"="No".

How do I package commands in the setup.exe file?

For this example, use C:\Windows\Options\SWD\Office 2010\setup.exe. You can bundle the batch file that contains the package commands by using WinZip Self-extractor (https://www.winzip.com/win/en/downse.html) or WinRAR https://www.rarlab.com/, and then transform the bundle into an EXE file. This setup.exe file is stored on MaaS360 and distributed from MaaS360. When the file is executed, the EXE file expands and batch files are executed, downloading large applications from a local share server. If the server is not exposed to the internet, make sure an error message is sent to the user that requires the user to connect to the corporate network if the installations fail. Using this method for large file downloads decreases the need for each device to call out and receive a large download that traverses proxies and firewalls and consumes large amounts of bandwidth. This process takes advantage of the LAN network instead of the WAN/Internet. See the following documentation for packaging your applications: