Office 2011 First-Launch User Experience

I keep hearing a lot of talk about MCX going away. Going forward, yes, profiles will replace MCX but these are not competing technologies. Consider profiles on the Mac to be the evolution of MCX not its replacement. And keep in mind that MCX as implemented in Casper still works through Lion.

If you look at profiles then you'll see they are doing essentially the same thing on Macs as MCX. They are managing .plist files. Managing .plist files is preferable to copying them because you can centrally control the user experience rather than just create one-time default preferences, which is all you'll do by copying preference files.

I encourage you to not forego MCX but try to use it now, especially if you're managing Mac OS X 10.6 and earlier machines. Your effort in defining keys and values in MCX will translate to profiles.

Use the settings I've documented here to create some managed preferences in Casper and get these working first.

http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/administration/mcx/

Let profiles come later.

I agree. OS X Profiles are MCX under the hood. I find it hard to believe that the basic plist format and how they are manipulated is going away anytime soon. They are the basis for how almost every application sets it preferences, even through the GUI controls. You shouldn't have any fear about using them. If anything, Profiles will get more options and more advanced with each new release of OS X until they may someday do everything you can do with MCX. At least I hope so.

Plists are at the core of the OS. Not using them would require a Delorean and a trip to NeXT.

I am new to the Mac administration scene. I'm rebuilding our infrastructure from scratch and when Apple reps told me that "Profiles are the future", "MCX is going away", and "Avoid using both MCX and Profiles to manage devices" I decided to try and accomplish everything with profiles. Is that a mistake? Can you understand my position?

Using MCX I can see the plists get created (prior to launching an app) in the users ~/library/preferences. Launching apps skips right over the wizards. Perfect! That's what I want to see.

Now when I try to move those plist settings into a Configuration Profile... The plists never show up. Perhaps i'm doing something wrong here...

What versions of Mac OS are you managing? Profiles are only for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and higher. For Mac OS X 10.6.x and lower you would use MCX.

Certificate based communication also has to be set up in your JSS for Profiles to work on your Lion systems and you need an APN certificate created and uploaded. In short, it takes a little more upfront setup and is restricted to Lion at this point for Profiles to get deployed. you may or may not have all of it set up correctly. MCX will work with anything you may be managing, although the specific settings can occasionally change from one OS version to another.

Nothing Pre-Lion will be managed under the new framework. The deeper I get, the more it seems like Apple's Profile Manager is still a little green. Since MCX has been around for so long, it is quite robust and has tons of granular control. Profiles looks a bit too "iOS Simple".

I might have to change direction and go down the MCX path. I really don't want to mix configuration methods.

I have all the certs setup properly. I'm using some profiles already without any issues.

Hi Greg,

From what I've heard, MCX is "deprecated" in 10.8.

They sill work fine in 10.7 & i'm using a mix of them & Profiles to manage my 10.7 macs.

This is much like Arsenal's title hopes, not dead... Just deprecated. :)

COYS!!

@bentoms Ya, kind of like cron is depreciated...nearly had a heart attack when Apple announced some years ago...I still prefer it over launchd but then what curmudgeon doesn't?

From what I've heard, MCX is "deprecated" in 10.8.

These are the 3 MCX settings we use with OS X 10.7 clients. Our machines bound to AD so user's name will be populated automatically to Office 2011.

com.microsoft.autoupdate2
Update Method -- User Level At Every Login -- HowToCheck -- string -- Manual

com.microsoft.error_reporting
Office 2011 - Error Reporting (ShipAssertEnabled) -- User Level At Next Login Only -- ShipAssertEnabled -- boolean -- false Office 2011 - Error Reporting (SQMReportsEnabled) -- User Level At Next Login Only -- SQMReportsEnabled -- boolean -- false

com.microsoft.office
Office 2011 - First Run Assistant Complete -- User Level At Next Login Only -- 14FirstRunSetupComplete -- integer -- 1
Office 2011 - Organization Name -- User Level At Next Login Only -- 14UserInfoUserOrganization -- string -- My Company

The deeper I get, the more it seems like Apple's Profile Manager is still a little green. Since MCX has been around for so long, it is quite robust and has tons of granular control. Profiles looks a bit too "iOS Simple".

This.

Also, just because it's deprecated doesn't mean it's not going to be there. There have been Installer methods that have been deprecated since 10.2 that are still around. Granted, don't rely on it being there in the next OS, but since MCX is apparently in 10.8 (though deprecated) I'd expect it to be there and function for the entirety of that major branch. That will give Apple a good amount of time to get Profiles to where they should be for the rest of us.

So it sounds like the consensus among the experienced Mac administrators at this time is that MCX is still the best choice when it comes to managing Lion devices. This is based on the immaturity of the Profiles technology compared to the proven track record of MCX. Furthermore, Apple has made claims of "this is going away" for other technologies and they still are around today so that shouldn't outweigh the benefits of sticking with MCX.

We know that MCX will be in 10.8 (unlike the Spurs in the CL) so that should buy me some time.

long live MCX. I'm not touching profiles until I have to. iOS profiles are enough to deal with this year.

So it sounds like the consensus among the experienced Mac administrators at this time is that MCX is still the best choice when it comes to managing Lion devices. This is based on the immaturity of the Profiles technology compared to the proven track record of MCX. Furthermore, Apple has made claims of "this is going away" for other technologies and they still are around today so that shouldn't outweigh the benefits of sticking with MCX. We know that MCX will be in 10.8 (unlike the Spurs in the CL) so that should buy me some time.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. That's not to say ignore profiles altogether. I think we are all keeping a close eye on them, but just because Apple is talking about the future as if its here today doesn't mean we should all be jumping ship to something that still has some growing pains. Use what works and is reliable now while continuing to learn about what's coming down the line. It sounds like you're already doing that, just wanted to reiterate it.

@Don Launchd is an Apple technology that they developed for the Mac OS 10.4 as a replacement for several monitoring and timing daemons and contributed back to the open source world.

It can do what cron can do and more. A shame that it hasn't caught on beyond Apple (that I've seen).

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Using MCX to try and skip the first-launch stuff in Office has never worked for me in 2008 or 2011.

I created a package for student machines that includes all the settings and push them FUT at imaging time (I can get you a file list of what's in there if you want).

For a time I did it for the teachers as well but then I decided *shrug* they can fill it out themselves. ;)

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Hi Greg,

If you look at managed preferences in the JSS, and your framework settings are set to allow for Casper to deploy managed preferences you can use the template found in the JSS for Microsoft Office to flag the first run assistant to not show up.

A lot of things you can do with our templates. You can also upload your own from say the Manifest Destiny project, or others that may post them here on JAMF Nation.

I hope this helps you.

Thanks,
Tom

Tom,

Yup, I currently have it setup using MCX (via Casper) and it is working. I was just reluctant to head down the MCX road because I was informed it was a 'dead end' and we would need to jump to Profiles (as early as Mtn Lion we were initially told...)

thanks,
greg