EMCO Remote Installer - Getting Started

Are you new to EMCO Remote Installer? This tutorial can be a good start point for you. It will give you features and user interface overview, explain concepts and show real usage examples. After reading of this tutorial you will be ready to use EMCO Remote Installer in your day-to-day work.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• How Remote Deployment Works?
• Application Interface Overview
• Get a List of Installed Applications
• Remote Installation
• Remote Uninstallation

Introduction

If you are looking for the solution that will help you to automate software deployment tasks, you should try EMCO Remote Installer. It will give you few benefits. First - you can install and uninstall software remotely across the network. Second - you can make mass deployment simultaneously on multiple PCs. As the result you will dramatically reduce software management efforts and, finally, take the full control over software on client's PCs. It worth to mention that is extremely easy to use - you just need to spend 5 minutes for reading this tutorial in order to be ready for making remote deployments.

How Remote Deployment Works?

Using EMCO Remote Installer you can make mass software deployment to remote PCs. As every mass operation, deployment is performed in the automatic mode. It requires special type of installation, ready for silent unattended deployment. Such installation should be preconfigured by particular values for all installation options and should not prompt any input from a user or interact with him by the any way. Windows Installer packages (MSI files) fulfill these requirements and, thus, can be installed by EMCO Remote Installer.

What about other installation types and EXE installations in particular? Or installations that require user input? Could they be installed remotely by EMCO Remote Installer? Yes, but such installations should be repackaged into MSI format. You can convert existing installation info MSI automatically using EMCO MSI Package Builder: you just need to follow installation process, select required options and enter prompted data - the rest is a task for EMCO MSI Package Builder.

You can start remote deployment having MSI package to be installed and target PC connected to the local network. It doesn't matter if you use domains or workgroups in your network - EMCO Remote Installer can operate in both environments. All what you have to do - scan the network to detect remote PCs, select those where you want to make installation, and execute installation process. In following sections you will see how it looks like on practice.

Application Interface Overview

It's supposed that you downloaded EMCO Remote Installer and installed it successfully. When you launch it at the first time, you see the Trial dialog that asks you to enter the license key or start evaluation period. Click on the Evaluate button in order to start 30-runs evaluation and you will pass to the main application screen. Let's take a closer look on it.

The main application screen is visually divided on two areas. At the left side of the screen you can find a toolbar with the main application actions. You can launch network scan and installed application scan by pressing buttons on this toolbar. Under the toolbar, All Computers and Favorites tabs are located. All Computers tab displays Machine Tree with a set of network PCs grouped by domains and workgroups. Favorites tab used to work with a group of selected PCs.

At the right side of the screen there are few views represented by the Computer's Scans, Scan Conditions and Log tabs. Information about applications, installed on remote PCs is represented on the Computer's Scans tab. Displayed information depends on the selection made on the Machine Tree. If Entire Network is selected - the Computer's Scans tab shows applications installed on every PC in the network. If particular PC is selected - the Computer's Scans tab shows applications installed on this PC. The Scan Conditions tab used to set custom application detection criteria and the Log tab shows the detailed information about the status of remote operations execution.

Actions related with a active view, are represented on the toolbar. For example, you can print a list of installed application by pressing correspondent button on the Computer's Scans tab. Information about installed applications is grouped by scans. Each scan represents a snapshot of installed application in the particular time. Available scans are shown by the upper table on the Computer's Scans tab. A list of applications for the selected scan is displayed by the lower table. There you can see there a full application name and version.

Get a List of Installed Applications

When you make remote installation, the first step is a targets choosing: selection a list of PCs where application should be installed. You need to ensure that required application isn't already installed on selected PCs and EMCO Remote Installer can help you with this.

If you launch EMCO Remote Installer at the first time, you see the empty Machine Tree. We need to fill it by pressing Scan Network button on the toolbar. A local network will be automatically scanned to detect all available PCs. Scan result is displayed by the Machine Tree, where all found PCs are located under their domains and workgroups. When the network scan will be completed, you can select Entire Network node in the Machine Tree and press Scan Applications button on the toolbar to start applications scanning. If you don't have enough permissions to access remote PCs, you will be prompted to enter administrative credentials.

As soon as applications scan will be completed, you will see changes on the Machine Tree and Computer's Scans. Applications scan status can be detected by PC icons in the Machine Tree: a green asterisk means that the scan was completed successfully; a red lock means that the scan was failed and you need rescan this PC with other credentials. On the Computer's Scans tab you can see a Current Scan entry in the Scans table and the detected applications list in the table below. A Current Scan is a temporary entry - its information will be overwritten at the next scan. But you can save scan results for further reference by pressing Save All button on the toolbar.

At the next step we will install Adobe Reader 9 on remote PCs, so you can review applications scan results to ensure that Adobe Reader 9 is absent on the target PCs.

Remote Installation

In scope of this tutorial we will install Adobe Reader 9 to the remote PCs, using MSI package created by EMCO MSI Package Builder, as described at this tutorial. In order to make remote installation we should choose PCs in the Machine Tree where we want to deploy application. As usual, you can select one PCs in the tree using mouse or select multiple PCs using mouse and Ctrl/Shift buttons. As soon as you selected required PCs, you can open context menu and choose Install Application item. You will pass to the Install MSI dialog where you need to enter the path to the MSI file that should be installed. Click on the OK button to start the installation process and see the progress on the status bar. As soon as installation will be completed you can switch to the Log tab and check the installation status.

Now we need to ensure that installation was completed successfully. Return back to the Computer's Scans tab and press Scan Applications button. You will see a Current Scan entry appeared on the Scan table. Using mouse and Ctrl key select previously saved scan and the Current Scan entry, and press Compare Scans button on the Computer's Scans toolbar. As the result at the lower table you will see scans comparison results, where Adobe Reader 9 entry is marked as Added. This means that installation was finished successfully and Adobe Reader 9 is ready to use on the remote PC. Press Compare Scans button once again to exit from compare view.

Remote Uninstallation

As the last step of this tutorial, we will uninstall recently installed Adobe Reader 9 from remote PCs. Using EMCO Remote Installer you can uninstall applications remotely, but only those ones which were installed by EMCO Remote Installer or Windows Installer, i.e. MSI installations. How can you detect if particular application can be uninstalled? It's really easy - you need to check application's icon in the scan results. Applications with a recycle bin on the icon can be uninstalled remotely.

Let's uninstall Adobe Reader 9. Select the Current Scan entry in the Scans table and select Adobe Reader 9 in the lower table. Open context menu and select Uninstall item. You will be prompted to confirm uninstallation. Press OK button to start uninstallation process. You can see the progress on the status bar and as soon as uninstallation will be finished, you can switch to the Log tab to check that it was completed successfully.