I’ve not always had a bromance with Microsoft’s Office suite. I cut my word processing teeth on WordPerfect 5.1, did most of my undergrad papers in BeOS’ one productivity suite ((GoBe Productive, still the best Office suite name)) , and touch-typed my way to graduating cum laude in grad school with countless Turabian-style Google Docs papers.
Office?
That was for corporate suits, man. Rich corporate suits.
But all that’s ancient history. Or maybe I’ve become a suit. Either way, I’m loving Office today.
In 2015, Office has transformed into the ultimate agnostic git ‘r done productivity package. It’s free to use in many cases, but if you want to ‘own’ it, you can subscribe to it, just like HBO ((For the IT Pro, this is a huge advantage, as a cheap E-class sub gives you access to your own Exchange instance, your own Sharepoint server, and your own Office tenant. It’s awesome!)) . It’s also available on just about any device or computing system you can think of, works just as well inside a browser as Google Docs does, and has an enormous install base.
Office has become so impressive and so ubiquitous that it’s truly a platform unto itself, consumed a la carte or as part of a well-balanced Microsoft meal. I’m bullish on Windows but if Office’s former partner ever sunsets, I’m convinced my kid and his kid will still grow up in an Office world.
All of that makes Office really important for IT, so important that you as an IT Guy should consider standing-up some easy instrumentation around it.
Enter Office Telemetry, a super-simple package that flows your Office data to a SQL collector, mashes it up, and gives you important insight into how your users are using Office. It also surfaces the problems in Office -or Office documents- before your users do, and it’s free.
Oh, did I mention it’s called Office Telemetry? This thing makes you feel like an astronaut when you’re using it!
Here’s how you deploy it. Total time: about an hour.
- Download the Office 2013 ADMX/ADML files for Group Policy and deploy them to your Domain Controllers.
- Spin-up a 2008 R2 or 2012 VM, or find a modestly-equipped physical box that at least has Windows Management Framework 3.0/Powershell 3.0 on it. If it has a SQL 2012 instance on it that you can use, even better. If not, don’t stress and proceed to the next step.
- Set-aside a folder on a separate volume (ideally) for the telemetry data. If you’re going to flow data from hundreds of Office users, plan for a minimum of 5-25 megabytes per user, at a minimum.
- If your users are on the WAN, plan accordingly. Telemetry data is pretty lightweight (50k chunks for older Office clients, 64k chunks for Office 2013)
Install Office ProPlus 2013 or 365 on the VM. You do not need to use an Office 365 license for it to run.- Download the Deploy Office Telemetry powershell script package from TechNet or via Script Browser in Powershell ISE.
- Because it’s a script, you’ll need to temporarily change your server’s execution policy, self-sign it, or configure Group Policy as appropriate to run it. TechNet has instructions.
- Run the script; it will download SQL 2012 express and install it for you if you don’t have SQL. It will also set proper SMB read/modify permissions on that folder you set up earlier.
- As if that wasn’t enough, the script will give you a single registry keyfile you can use to deploy to your user’s machines.
- But I prefer the Group Policy/SCCM route. Remember the ADMX files you deployed? Flip the switches as appropriate under User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Microsoft Office 2013> Telemetry Dashboard.
- Sit back, and watch the data flow in, and pat yourself on the back because you’re being a proactive IT Pro!
As I’ve deployed this solution, I’ve found broken documents, expensive add-ons that delay Office, and multiple other issues that were easy to resolve but difficult to surface. It’s totally worth your time to install it.
Wilson.tech 