Pushing the Infor Smart Office to Client Machines

When a Click Once application is to be pushed out with a tool like Microsoft SMS, a small helper application must be used. The helper application is a small .exe file called PushClient.exe that takes the install point URL as a parameter. To install Infor Smart Office configure Microsoft SMS or any other tool used to execute the PushClient.exe once on every client machine the user logs into.

Specifying which Install Point to use

When the PushClient.exe is executed, Infor Smart Office is silently installed on the client machine in the user profile. The PushClient.exe starts the installation from the install point URL sent to it as a parameter. If there are future updates to the Infor Smart Office all upgrades are handled automatically by installed Infor Smart Office. Infor Smart Office checks every time it starts for updates on the install point and automatically installs any updates.

Normally when installing Infor Smart Office, a URL like this is used:

http://server.company.com:19005/mango/MangoClient.application?server=https://server.company.com:19006

When pushing out Infor Smart Office to the client machines, the server parameter can not be included as a parameter to PushClient.exe. This is because the server parameter is read and stored away when Infor Smart Office is started. However, when Infor Smart Office is pushed out, the application is installed but not started. You can solve this by creating a group policy in Active Directory called ServerPath. See Creating a group policy specifying Infor Smart Office Server URL.

Example

PushClient.exe http://server.company.com/mango/MangoClient.application

If the ServerPath has not been specified as a group policy before starting Infor Smart Office, you will see the error message "No Server URL was specified. Please verify your environment."

Pushing out a purchased SSL certificate

When pushing out Infor Smart Office the code signing certificate used to sign the Infor Smart Office manifest must be pushed out to all clients as a Trusted Publisher before Infor Smart Office is pushed out. If this is not done the Infor Smart Office will fail to install. Depending on what kind of code signing certificate is used the instruction differs.

Normally when buying a code signing certificate from a third party vendor the third party vendors root certificate is already distributed by Microsoft together with Windows to the Trusted Root Certificates Authority list and therefore is the only thing that needs to be done to push out the code signing certificate as a trusted publisher to the clients. For more information about how to push out a code signing certificate to clients, see Pushing a code signing certificate to clients as Trusted Publisher in Active Directory.

To verify that the third party vendors root certificate already is on the client, open the browser menu and click Settings > Privacy, search, and services > Security section > Manage Certificates. Look in the Trusted Root Certificates Authority list after your third party vendor.

Pushing out a certificate created by an in-house Certificate Authority

Two things must be done:

  • The code signing certificate used to sign the Infor Smart Office manifest file must be pushed out to the clients as a Trusted Publisher.
  • The root certificate used to issue the code signing certificate must be pushed out to the clients as a Trusted Root Certificate Authority.

If the Microsoft Certificate Authority Enterprise Edition is used the root certificate may already be pushed out to the client.

Note: Depending of the configuration of the template for the Code Signing certificate the certificate may have to be renewed every year. There will be problem if the certificate has expired and there is an update to the Infor Smart Office that needs to be signed with the same certificate as the original manifest.

Pushing out a self-signed certificate

When using a self-signed certificate to sign the Infor Smart Office manifest file the certificate is both a code signing certificate and a root certificate at the same time.

  • The code signing certificate used to sign the Infor Smart Office manifest file must be pushed out to the clients as a Trusted Publisher.

  • The same code signing certificate must also be pushed out to the clients as a Trusted Root Certificate Authority.

See Installing a self-signed SSL certificate.