The Office 2000 Network Platform

Features Available Under Microsoft Windows 2000

If an organization deploys Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional, including Active Directory, then Microsoft Office 2000 can take advantage of additional Windows 2000 features. Some of these features require only Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2000 Professional; most require both.

IntelliMirror support

IntelliMirror™ is a set of powerful features native to Windows 2000 for change and configuration management of users’ computers. These features combine the advantages of centralized computing with the performance and flexibility of distributed computing. By leveraging different features in both the server and client operating systems, IntelliMirror allows users’ data, applications, and settings to follow them to any computer on their organization’s network.

All users have individual data and settings. IntelliMirror increases the availability of the user’s computer and computing environment by intelligently storing information, settings, and applications based on policy definitions. IntelliMirror can recover and restore users’ data, applications, and personal settings in a Windows 2000 – based environment.

At the core of IntelliMirror are three features:

• User data management
• Software installation and maintenance
• User and computer settings management

Administrators can use these IntelliMirror features separately or together, depending on the requirements of their environment. Office 2000 fully supports these features.

User data management

The user data management feature of IntelliMirror supports the mirroring of user’s data to the network and the local caching of selected network data. This feature ensures that data is protected, is available offline, and is available from any computer on the network.

Data follows the user only if the data is stored in a location set to roam, such as the My Documents folder. Office 2000 supports user data management by storing users Office 2000 documents in the My Documents folder by default.

Software installation and maintenance

The software installation and maintenance features in Windows 2000 allow an application to be assigned to a user or a computer, or published to a user. Office 2000 fully supports assigning and publishing applications. Assigning and publishing applications requires both Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server.

When an application is assigned to a user, the application is advertised for that user the next time the user logs on to a Windows 2000 Professional computer. Advertising is the process of preconfiguring some Windows registry information (such as file associations, Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) activation information, and support for the Windows installer service) and application shortcuts on the client computer.

The application shortcuts allow the Windows installer to install the application the first time it is started. The application file associations and OLE activation information allow the Windows installer to install the application the first time a user attempts to open a file or activate an OLE object that requires a missing application.

When an application is assigned to a computer, the application fully installs the next time the computer is started and connects to the Windows 2000 network. The application is then available to all users of that computer.

When an application is published to users, the application is made available in the Active Directory. No advertisement or application information such as shortcuts are installed on user’s computers; however, all published packages, such as Microsoft Office 2000, are displayed in Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. Information in the Active Directory enables the application to automatically install when needed — for example, if a user who has not installed Office opens an Office 2000 document.

Microsoft Office 2000 can be assigned to either users or computers or published to users. As part of enabling applications to be assigned and published to users, Windows 2000 introduces per-user support in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry subtree. (In Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT Workstation 4.0, the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT subtree is supported on a per-machine basis.) The HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT subtree contains the file association and class registration for OLE.

In previous versions of Windows, if one user has the DOC file type set to Wordpad.exe and another user logs on to that computer, then that user’s DOC files are associated with Wordpad.exe, even if the other user has DOC files associated with Winword.exe in their roaming user profile. Windows 2000 solves this problem by supporting the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT subtree on a per-user basis, which allows this information to roam with the user.

These per-user associations are set up when an application is installed for a particular user. When an application is installed for all users of a computer, the per-machine version of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT subtree is used. The per-user features of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT subtree require Windows 2000 Professional.

Windows 2000 has also changed OLE activation to call the Windows installer. If a user activates an OLE object, such as an embedded document, then the operating system calls the Windows installer for the required application. As long as the required application is installed by using the Windows installer and is set to Installed on First Use, then the Windows installer can install the application required to work with the OLE object even if the application has never been installed on the user’s computer.

Note   If the required application is installed by using the Windows installer, but is set to Not Available, or if the application does not use the Windows installer, then an error message is displayed and the OLE object cannot be activated until the user runs Setup manually.

When the required application is set to Installed on First Use, the behavior of applications that use the Windows installer differ slightly, depending on the version of Windows that is running on the user’s computer. When running under Windows 2000 Professional, the missing application required to open an OLE object is automatically installed without user intervention. (When running under Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT Workstation 4.0, the missing application required to open an OLE object is installed, but the user is prompted first.)

Additionally, if the application has been installed, but has been damaged (for example, if a key file has been deleted), then the Windows installer repairs the application before it passes the path to the application back to OLE. This behavior gives applications that use the Windows installer install-on-demand and resiliency with OLE activation. In applications that do not use the Windows installer, OLE does not call the Windows installer and activation of the application fails.

Windows 2000 Professional is required to install an application automatically and to activate an OLE object without user intervention.

User and computer settings management

Using the Windows 2000 user and computer settings management feature allows administrators to centrally define computing environments for groups of users and computers so that those users and computers automatically get the correct environment. Administrators can add new users and computers, define settings for groups of people and computers, and apply changes for groups of people.

Furthermore, with the IntelliMirror feature enabled, administrators can restore a user’s settings if a computer fails, and ensure that a user’s computer settings follow the user if he or she roams to another computer on the network.

Office 2000 supports this feature by providing application policies in the form of administrative template (ADM) files that can be used to customize Office applications.

With Windows 2000, the registry policy folders (Software\Policies) under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER subtree and the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree are volatile. When any Group Policy object that affects a user or computer changes, keys written by that Group Policy are deleted and rewritten.

This behavior allows the policy settings to change whenever the affected Group Policy objects change, such as when a user roams to a different organizational unit. Also, these registry folders are secured so that only administrators can change the entries and values. (In previous versions of Windows, any user can change policy settings in the registry.)

User and computer settings management features require Windows 2000 Professional.

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Remote operating system installation

In addition to IntelliMirror features, Windows 2000 supports remote operating system installation, which simplifies the task of installing a new copy of the operating system on client computers throughout the organization.

Remote operating system installation provides a mechanism for computers to connect to a network server during initial start up, and then allows the server to drive a local installation of Windows 2000 Professional. When used with IntelliMirror, remote operating system installation reduces the costs of setting up new computers, and provides better recovery from computer failures.

If you are adding or replacing a computer, or returning a repaired computer to the network, remote operating system installation provides the services to reload the operating system. At the same time, IntelliMirror provides the services to quickly regenerate installed applications, such as Microsoft Office 2000, and to restore user data and personal computer settings.

Remote operating system installation requires Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional.

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Distributed File System

The Windows 2000 Distributed File System (DFS) provides a layer of indirection for servers. DFS permits consolidation of server and share names into a single logical directory. Using DFS, an administrator can set up a series of Office 2000 distribution servers advertised as a single DFS name. This configuration allows the administrator to provide load balancing and redundancy on the servers used to deploy Office 2000.

For example, using DFS, an administrator can publish three servers (\\Server1\Office2000, \\Server2\Office2000, and \\Server3\Office2000) as child nodes of a \\Software\Apps\Office2000 share. When a client computer gains access to the \\Software\Apps\Office2000 share, it is transparently routed to one of the three participating servers.

The Windows installer service can use a source list. If the service cannot connect to the last source it used, it searches for an available server stored in the source list. During deployment, an administrator can place other servers in the source list. If you choose to use DFS instead, you probably do not want to use the source list feature provided by the Windows installer, unless you want to have one group of servers back up another group of servers.

DFS requires Windows NT Server 4.0 or Windows 2000 Server for DFS server shares. Client computers must be running a version of Windows supported by Microsoft Office to access DFS shares. Computers running Windows 95 must install the DFS client software separately to work with DFS shares. The Windows installer source list feature works under all versions of Windows supported by Microsoft Office.

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Copying, moving, and deleting HTML files and folders

When an Office 2000 application saves an HTML document that requires supporting files, it creates a file such as My Web Page.htm, and a corresponding folder that holds all of the supporting files, which is named “My Web Page files.”

When a user copies, moves, or deletes an HTML file like My Web Page.htm, the Windows 2000 operating system automatically looks for a corresponding folder named “My Web Page_files.” If the folder exists, Windows 2000 copies, moves, or deletes the folder along with it. If a user moves, copies, or deletes a folder named “My Web Page_files,” the system automatically looks for a file named My Web Page.htm and copies, moves, or deletes that file along with the folder. (In previous versions of Windows, only the file or folder is copied, moved, or deleted.)

This feature is turned on by default when Office 2000 is running under Windows 2000. To turn this feature off, add a DWORD value entry named NoFileFolderConnection in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Explorer subkey and set its value to 1. Setting the NoFileFolderConnection value entry to 0 or deleting the value entry restores the default behavior.

This feature requires Windows 2000 Professional. The feature does not work when copying, moving, or deleting HTML files created with FrontPage. It also does not work when copying, moving, or deleting HTML files from the Web Folders object.

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See also

For more information about Windows 2000 Server, see the Windows 2000 Server Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/windowsnt5/.

For more information about Windows 2000 Professional, see the Windows 2000 Professional Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsnt5/workstation/.

For information about group policies in Windows 2000, search for Windows 2000 Server group policy to find the "Windows 2000 Server Group Policy" white paper on the Windows NT Server Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/.