Outlook 2007 Add-In Deployment Process

Question

I've successfully created a VSTO Add-In for Outlook 2007 in VS2010, yay! Now comes the deployment part, which seems to be even more arcane.

I need to deploy this Add-In on my company's server, which is running Windows Server Standard, SP2. It has MS Office 2007 on it, and the clients talk to a different Exchange server. The company has thin clients that all Remote-Desktop the Server to access their Outlook.

What would be the procedure for this? There's various articles that Google pulls up on deploying Office Add-Ins, all of which are a tad over my head. My impression is that there are many different ways to install Add-Ins, based on what Office version you have, what VS version you have, what OS you are installing it on, if you want to install for a single user or all users on the server, and various other circumstances. I can't get a clear picture of what to do. The fact that I'm installing on a system with a server/thin-client arrangement possibly complicates things.

Anyway, I can spend the next few days researching how registry keys work and how they affect Add-Ins, learning how to make .MSI packages, exactly how certificates work and if I need one to publish or if I can deploy into the Program Files directory, or if that option in the .NET 4.0 framework even applies to a VSTO Add-In, etc., etc., etc.

There's just a lot of variables and I would appreciate advice that pertains to my exact scenario. Or, barring that, exactly what subjects I need to study up on to know what to do, and links to them.

Edit: I need to deploy to 1 user on the server first, for testing, and then eventually all or most of the users, so help for singular and broad deployment would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The following articles helped me a lot when I first tried to deploy an add-in. Unfortunately my scenario did not included server/thin-clients, I used the MSI only for per-user installations, so I cannot say for sure what will be the complicates to rise from the side.

Here is the article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsto/ff937654.aspx

There you should find all the info required for registry location, files, manifests, etc...