User settings location and setting default template paths

[ashak]

Hi,

I'm trying to deploy OpenOffice.org 2.0, I have it installed on a file share on my server (an administrative install), I have created a transform so that I can install the application silently with my required options. However, there's a few things i'd like to setup before I unleash the program on my users.

Firstly, with OO 1.X I was able to keep my users settings in their home directory on the server, this meant that they could sit at any of the Windows machines and as long as OO was installed, they could use it with their own personal settings as they were always accessed from their home directory. Is it possible to do this with OOo 2? It appears to me that the settings for each user are created locally on each machine with OOo2, so if my users do sit at different machines, they would need to configure their settings again.

Secondly, is it possible to setup any default settings, for example it would be very useful for me to setup things like default paths to document templates just once (preferably before installing to all of the machines on the network) and have all machines default to using these locations so that I don't have users whining that they 'can't access the templates' and having to manually run them through the process to setup the path..

I'm almost certain I could do both of the above by editting some of the files in the OpenOffice.org 2.0 folder that's in the same location (on the network share) as the openofficeorg20.msi after that administrative install that I performed, I just have no idea where to start looking or where to locate documentation on the options that I can use in the xml files.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[jpeake]

exact same boat.

please post if you find somthing. I wonder if MS provides an ADM template for OOo group policy? :-)

[vjirasek]

MS will never create ADM file for OO for these reasons:
1. ADM files are always created by the application vendor
2. OO does not store user or application settings to the Registry (apart from some few settings not worth mentioning) and ADM templates DO work with the registry ONLY.

These is big discussion on this site about the storage of settings. My view: if this product is willing ot go to large organisations, it has to properly support MS Active Directory. Id understand developers do not like MS and say it is propriatery but it is widely used and very well managed.