Has anyone been able to deploy unattended eM client in enterprise environment ideally via GPO? There are two basic issues:
- MSI installation does not proceed correctly if it is done via SYSTEM account (that is standard GPO deployment) - this is very likely because the installer wants to write into directories where the SYSTEM account has no access - MSI is not optimized for such deployment.
- Licensing - how do I register the installation after installation is done? There are two ways and both are useless for large environments (or I do not understand how I am supposed to implement this in an unattended manner):
- one is to run the exe with activate parameter - obviously, this cannot be scripted in any reasonable manner.
- the other is via the Deployment automation guide requires you to do the same eventually, you just run the client with a different parameter.
They boast with large companies using their product, which is ridiculous, I surely see places like Toyota where admin run from workstation to workstation to install this. There is either another, hidden, way about which the support has no idea or they make installers specifically for those large companies so that they do no have to deal with this nonsense or they the information is misleading.
eM client is very nice but it does not seem mature enough (in both regards the code and the people who work on it) to be reasonably usable in standard enterprise environment. This is also clear from the default placement of the database in the roaming part of the user directory - i cannot but wonder what the education of the developers is when it comes to active directory environments. Note that free Thunderbird offers very simple GPO deployment including policies. Why is it so complicated to enable MSI transforms where all the settings, including the licenses could be given.
Or am I missing something?