Different Source Servers

[Infohos]

I just viewed the webinar and found it most interesting. There are only a few things that prevent us from being able to use the Update Service. One of them is this:

We have WAN connections to the networks of all of our customers (our products are not plain retail obviously). Each customer has his own file server(s) which serves for 10 to 1000 users. We would like users from customer 1 to download their updates from the file server of customer 1. Users from customer 2 should download from the file server of customer 2,...
Also some users/customers should be able to download the updates from an URL on the internet.
We would copy the updates at night to all the file servers.

Can the Update Service make a difference? When it runs it sees a certain element based on which it knows the name of the right file server or URL?

Thanks!

[Chris_Woerner]

I think I understand your need. You want to distribute like this:

ISV >>> Customer >>> End-Users

Where the end-users are downloading updates locally from each 'customer' server.

Right now, we don't have a easy solution for that need. You cannot route each 'end-user' to look for updates at the local 'customer' server. All end-users will go back to the same server (hosted by InstallShield or you) to get the updates.

One possible work around....You could do this if distribute different releases (product codes) to each 'customer'. Then you could publish a different update for each 'customer' that would point to the 'customer' server. However, that will take too much time if you have hundreds or thousands of customers. It also still requires each 'end-user' to hit a central server to find the location of the update - which would be on the 'customer' server.

Having said all this, the need you describe is not uncommon. We are working on a way to allow you to point the 'end-users' back to a 'customer' server instead of one central server.

Please let me know if you have any additional requirements above those you originally posted.

[Infohos]

Thanks for the reply, Chris.

You're right. We need a way to logically group users. Based on group membership users go to a different source server or can be counted per group. Maybe a conditional install can also be based on group membership.

You probably expect my next question, do you have any idea of when this could be available?

We have no IS deployment yet so all options are still open for us, but I wonder if we start deploying the same software with different product codes, like you suggested, won't it be a struggle to revert back to one product code when a new version of ISUS arrives with forementioned feature?

Cheers.

[Chris_Woerner]

Another idea is to use message conditions to group users - instead of different product codes.

For example, during the installation you can set a property on the end-user's machine that gives a group # or customer #. The best place is probaby the registry. When you author a software update, you can condition the update to go to users with a specific registry setting. So, you would have a different update message for each of your customer groups. In this scenario, all your end-users would hit one central location to get the location of their updates. But the location would be a local server.

I think this idea is better than my original concept of using Product Codes. But again, the issue is maintenance. For each update, you would need to author a message for each customer group.

When we do release the feature to solve your need, you would be better with one product code. The idea will be to set a local setting that points the end-users client to a local server instead of a central server. That setting will be an installation property that could be set during any update.

[Infohos]

I didn't think of it at first but what if the local server in each location would have the same name? Or at least a DNS-entry which has the same name but of course different IP addresses.

For example, in ISUS the location is entered as \\softwareserver\share$. Now if in every location the name "softwareserver" is known with the IP-address of the local server, would it work?

Best regards.