Adobe Installation and Licensing

I’ve wanted to do a top ten list on this blog for sometime. I am sucker for those top ten articles on the internet. You know the ones “Top Ten Best Places For Real Estate In Places You Would Never Move To,” “Top Ten Worst Places For Real Estate Including Where You Live,” or “Top Ten Best Android Apps Released Between 8-10 AM This Morning.” And then you click on them and then the site annoyingly makes you click through ten separate pages so you can see ten ads. By the time you get to the 8th one you have lost interest and feel your carpal tunnel kicking in.

This is not that type of top ten. Nope. Just a list of ten awesome things about the free IT packaging tool Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) 2.1. Once you get to the 8th item on this list you’ll say “I can’t stand it, I have to have it now” and you’ll stop reading and click on the download links. But wait, how can a dot release that has TEN awesome things in it? That is a lot of stuff for a dot release. Right? Well the AAMEE team is pretty much obsessed with packing in as much goodness as they can. We’ve been focused on saving IT admins time and I think this release has a lot to offer on that front.

So without further ado I bring you…
Top Ten Awesomeness of AAMEE 2.1:

1) Existing packages can be updated!
We now have a new workflow that allows you to update packages that are created with AAMEE 2.1 so that they are always up to date. If you create a package in October, you can go back and refresh the updates in that package in December. Awesome.

2) AAMEE now supports more than just the Creative Suite!
Sweet, more suites. AAMEE 2.1 fully supports Technical Communication Suite 3.5 and has limited support for eLearning Suite 2.5 and Acrobat X Suite. Awesome.

3) No more merging of DVD images!
Some folks download the Creative Suite from the Adobe Licensing Website (LWS) as one single large image. Others get it other ways including from resellers and have to take the physical discs and then create images of them and then go through a convoluted and time consuming process of merging them. Merge no more my friends as we now support multiple disc inputs, both physical or iso/dmg. Awesome.

4) Preferences!
Those who have never used AAMEE or have created lots of packages with AAMEE may not think that preferences as a category are not worthy of my gratuitous and carefree use of exclamation marks, but trust me. Prior to 2.1 there were no saved preferences. Now AAMEE automatically remembers your preferences for things including the package name, save to location, Installer location and best yet all the options you select on the Configure Package screen are now all saved after you quit and reopen AAMEE. A big time saver if you have to create multiple packages in a row. Awesome.

5) Never quit AAMEE again!
Another time saver for sure. Now after you are finished building a package you will see a New Package button that takes you back to the start of the workflow process. It is kind of an infinitive loop. Why would you need this? Well let’s say you had to break down the Master Collection into 14 separate application packages. Before, you would have to open AAMEE 14 times. Combined with the fact that we now have preferences this dreadfully laborious task would be, well, still dreadfully laborious. But overall, quicker. Awesome.

6) Support for Apple Mac OS 10.7 Lion!
You can now happily use AAMEE 2.1 to create packages on your 10.7 system knowing it has been tested and vetted by the AAMEE crew. Awesome.*
*See the Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion doc for the latest on compatibly with the products and 10.7.

7) Support for Apple Remote Desktop 3.5!
Want to create packages with AAMEE 2.1 and then push them out to systems using ARD 3.5? Of course you do. And you can sleep well at night knowing it is supported. Awesome.

8 ) Filter updates by name!
We’ve added a Search by Product option in the Updates section of AAMEE 2.1. There are a ton of updates and sifting through them can be a little daunting. Now in the Updates screen simply type in the Product name and get instant results of what updates are available for that product. Awesome.

9) AAMEE 2.1 is thinking about its demise!
“Ever since the XP-38 came out, they just aren’t in demand.” Wether its landspeeders or packaging tools eventually things become obsolete. As exciting and shiny as AAMEE 2.1 is today, we have to come to grips that one day there will be an AAMEE 2.2 or an AAMEE 3.0. And AAMEE 2.1 has come to terms with this and starting with this version it will do a search at launch to see if a new version is available and announce its own redundancy. Awesome.

10) ExceptionInfo.txt file now includes commands!
Okay, so maybe I front loaded this list a bit and now the end of the list is looking rather thin. There maybe there is some truth to that. But if you are a Mac admin and having to deploy items from the Exceptions folder you probably don’t want to have to go to a website just to get the command line text for deployment, right? Why not put it in the doc that is in the Exceptions folder? We did. See? Even this last one falls under the category of: Awesome.

So there you go, ten solid reasons to click on the links below and start using AAMEE 2.1. We also have a new Read Me that includes more on these new features and a list of known issues. And we are continually updating and revising the CS5/CS5.5 Enterprise Deployment Guide that explains how to use AAMEE, APTEE, AUSST and more.

Adobe Application Manager, Enterprise Edition 2.1 (Windows)
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/developer/creativesuite/AAMEE/win/ApplicationManagerEnterprise_2_1_all.exe

Adobe Application Manager, Enterprise Edition 2.1 (Mac)
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/developer/creativesuite/AAMEE/mac/ApplicationManagerEnterprise_2_1_all.dmg

Jody Rodgers | Senior Product Manager | Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite | Adobe Systems

Our friends in the Acrobat crew announced this week on their IT Maters blog that the forthcoming Acrobat X and Reader X updates will be available in the Microsoft System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) catalog. Here’s the post:

SCCM and SCUP Catalog Deployments for Acrobat and Reader X « IT Matters
http://blogs.adobe.com/pdfitmatters/2010/11/sccm-and-scup-catalog-deployments-for-acrobat-and-reader-x.html

Now, here is the question for Windows IT admins: How helpful would it be to have the Adobe Creative Suite updates available in the SCUP catalog? How much estimated time/money would this save your IT organization? Please use the comments section to let us know if this should be a focus for us. I am also curious to hear how your are currently managing Adobe Creative Suite updates for your Windows users and what are the challenges you are currently facing with that current process. I may be reaching out to you offline for followups or might arrange a little Windows IT admin virtual meet-up to discuss how we can improve things on the Creative Suite application update front.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Cheers,

Jody Rodgers | Product Manager| Enterprise & Volume | Creative Suite

In the past, some of our enterprise customers had expressed the need and desire for an easy way for them to host Adobe updates internally and let their client machines point to the in-house update server rather than Adobe Update server. With the release of Adobe Updater Server Setup Tool (AUSST), you would be able to setup and manage your own update server.

Adobe Updater Server Setup Tool is a platform specific command line tool, which can be run on Windows and Macintosh to help sync updates from Adobe Update server. You can use any HTTP server (such as Apache) to host these updates. Using AUSST, you can:

1) Sync updates from Adobe update server to a clean machine.
2) Update the already download updates using incremental download.
3) Migrate from one in-house update server to another in-house update server.
4) Generate AdobeUpdater.Overrides, to allow client machines running Adobe Application Manager point to new in-house update server.

After you have setup the in-house Update server, you can re-direct your Adobe Application manager running on client machines point to this new in-house update server. For this, you would need to place AdobeUpdater.Overrides at following platform specific location on the client machines in your network

• In Windows XP – \Documents and Settings\All Users\ApplicationData\Adobe\AAMUpdater\1.0\AdobeUpdater.Overrides
• In Windows 7/Vista – \ProgramData\Adobe\AAMUpdater\1.0\AdobeUpdater.Overrides
• In Mac OS X – /Library/Application Support/Adobe/AAMUpdater/1.0/AdobeUpdater.Overrides

There is also an option provided in Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) 1.1 to help you configure your client machines for this redirection, which will place AdobeUpdater.Overrides in the above platform specific locations on your client machines.

You can download the Mac and Windows versions along with the documentation here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/creativesuite/enterprisedeployment.html

-Manju Bansal, Ravi Prakash Singh
Adobe Updater Team

Enterprise in-house update server setup using Adobe Update Server Setup Tool

What happens when Adobe ships something as monumental in scale as CS5? Does everyone go on a long holiday? Actually not. Many folks are hard at work listening to feedback from our customers, tweaking things here and there, and fixing bugs as soon as possible. With so many applications being updated after release it is difficult for IT admins to keep track of all the updates that come out. In fact, there have already been 15 released within the CS family of applications. I am happy to announce a new website/blog that will allow for easy tracking of all Adobe Creative Suite updates. This will allow you to track all of the CS5 updates by subscribing to a RSS or Atom feed. Check it out:

http://blogs.adobe.com/csupdates/

Each blog post will indicate the name of the update, direct links to the Windows and Macintosh update files, size of the files, a description of the update, and any relevant links to Read Me documents, release notes, associated product blog entries, etc.

All CS5 updates are now cumulative and therefore only the latest updates will be listed. Older update blog entries will be deleted once a new update is available for that product. For instance, if Bridge 4.0.4 is made available we will delete the Bridge 4.0.3 post as it will no longer be relevant as the 4.0.4 update would be the only update needed to be deployed.

Making it easier to track updates via this new blog/website is just one of many steps we are taking to make updating the Creative Suite easier for IT admins. The next big thing will be the release of the 1.1 version of the Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) coming out in early September and will include the ability to package CS5 updates into MSIs or PKGs either individually or in the format of multiple updates. (i.e. Adobe Photoshop CS5 12.0.1 update alone or Adobe Photoshop CS5 12.0.1 update, Device Central CS5 – 3.0.1 Update, Adobe Illustrator 15.0.1 CS5 Update, etc. all in one big MSI or PKG.) But wait, there’s more! AAMEE 1.1 will also have the ability to bundle updates in a “über-package” that also includes the installable components of CS5. (i.e. Adobe Photoshop CS5 12.0 + Adobe Photoshop CS5 12.0.1 update or… all of the Master Collection + 14* updates!)

*You noticed that didn’t you? I said there were 15 updates for CS5 but then only had 14 updates in my example. I bet when you were in school you liked to find flaws in your textbooks and point them out to your teachers in the hope of extra credit. Well, Adobe InCopy CS5 7.0.2 was released and is part of the CS5 family but not part of the Master Collection. Those that already knew that, your extra credit has been recorded.

RSS Feed Link:

feed://blogs.adobe.com/csupdates/feed/

Atom Feed Link:

feed://blogs.adobe.com/csupdates/feed/atom/

Jody Rodgers
Product Manager, Enterprise & Volume Customers
Creative Suite