OpenOffice.Org in a Corporate Environment?

robpoe asks: "I've been working on a rollout plan for OpenOffice.org 2.0 for a medium sized network. This network runs a number of different MS Office versions, and we absolutely must retain the Microsoft Office 97/2000/2002 file formats (for interoperability with the public and other entities). Getting our versions of Office to 2003 is $65k+, so we're looking closely at OOo. The problem is, since OOo keeps track of changes per user, and we have users that move around (and no, Roaming Profiles are not an option for us), and you cannot expect a user to change those preferences on every computer they log in to. Let's hear some great deployment plans for keeping the default file type, and even general rollout plans. How are you doing it?" "It seems that nobody has done this (or documented it) that I've found. Let's see if we can get a good thing going by documenting a good, easy to manage rollout plan. Oh, and the default for saving files has to remain in Office 97/2k/xp format.

What are you using to deploy OOo automatically on your network. Assume that we have capability of login script (batch files / registry changes), but no SMS/ZenWorks/etc.

Comments

Store the OpenOffice config file on network drive

[Harry Balls]

Elementary, Watson.

Once a user logs on, a logon script mounts his own personal "network drive" from a central file server.

Just configure OpenOffice so that OpenOffice will read (and write) the OO configuration from that personal "network drive".
Yes, a user could still mess up his configuration, but that would only affect himself, not others.

Use a macro

[David_Bloom]

Make an OpenOffice.org BASIC macro that sets the configuration settings. Put the macro in an empty document, and make it autoopen that document on startup only once (also code the document so it closes automatically once it's done).

Open Office

[scarolan]

We are a much smaller company - at only $8m a year in sales, but here's how we do it:

12-15 users all log into a central server running Fedora Core 3 using thin clients. We currently use the excellent LTSP (www.ltsp.org) packages to accomplish this. Through experience we have found that a Pentium 4 server with about 2 gigs of RAM can comfortably handle up to 15 users or so, more than that and the load gets a bit too heavy. The programs that eat up the most memory and CPU cycles are Firefox, Evolution, Open Office, and Adobe Acrobat. We do allow streaming radio with xmms, because it doesn't eat up too much bandwidth or memory, and our users like it. The desktop clients themselves are old Pentium II boxes with 64mb of ram, no hard drives, and no cd-roms.

All our sales reps use OpenOffice every day to type up their quotes, fax cover sheets, etc. My secretary uses OpenOffice Calc to do spreadsheet work for our government contracts. It's easy to set all your clients to default to MS file formats - go into the File > Save settings and set them to always use .xls or .doc for your files.

You don't need to use thin clients, however, to use Open Office. We just went the thin client route because it was inexpensive and easy to do with existing hardware. We are planning to upgrade soon so that each user has their own desktop machine running local apps, but still mounting the home directories on the server.

I suppose if it can be done with 15 computers running linux, you could also do it with your Windows boxes. Just make sure they all have the same OO settings, and that they are all set to save in the proper file formats before your users even get a chance to work with it. OO works almost like MS Office - but be prepared for lots of complaining from users who will say "But Microsoft Office didn't work this way" . . .

Re:Why not?

[Ucklak]

It they have an open license agreement with MS (as most do in a corporate case), they are required to upgrade in X number of years. They could still use the software but it would be illegal (in the eyes of the BSA, MS, and the EULA).

Last time I checked, the retail version of MSOffice 2002/2003 doesn't allow the use of transform files which set corporate preferences for the user during profile setup.

Re:Store the OpenOffice config file on network dri

[Jjeff1]

No. Lets say we mount the users' home drive as drive letter H. You can do this with windows policies or a login script. No touching workstations. Then we configure the base install of OO.org to look in H:\ooo-settings\ for all it's config data.

Boom! Unique settings for each user without roaming profiles