Hi Guys,
Not sure how many of you use the Jet administration console, but we have started using it in an effort to centralise our datasources and settings.
It's great, I love it, and hope that Jet adds much more functionality to it going forward.
I have the following scenario;
We have a 2008 R2 remote desktop server for our accounts users, and we have a fairly high staff turnover. At present, we manually activate the Jet add in, and point Jet to our administration service. We have to do this for each user as and when they start and first need to use Jet.
What I would like to do, is automate this process to save me having to do it manually. I know there is an enable Jet add-in executable installed along with Jet, so my thoughts on how to do this are below:
We could set a login policy, that runs the executable when a user logs in. This would work, but I think the user would get a window appear (I would like it to be silent and in the background), and it would run whether the user has it enabled already or not. This is a bit unnecessary, as we only need it to run once. Perhaps there is some way to check if it is enabled already, and skip it if that is the case.
As for the settings location, I can only assume that the Jet settings are saved in a file inside the users AppData folder, so maybe I could edit this file, or copy over a template from an existing user.
I am not sure if anyone has ever done this before, but I would appreciate any advice or opinions anyone may have on the subject.
Many Thanks,
Eds
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Jet Reports Historic Posts Official comment Hi Hughes,
That's great!!
Here's what I have gone for in the end:
I have a VBScript as below:Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") WshShell.Run chr(34) & "C:\Scripts\Enable Jet.bat" & Chr(34), 0 Set WshShell = NothingThis runs the actual script without showing a command prompt window, so makes the process silent.
Within enable jet.bat is:if exist %appdata%\jet-enabled.txt (GOTO SKIP) else (GOTO ENABLE) :ENABLE "C:\Program Files (x86)\JetReports\Jet.Activator.exe" XCOPY C:\Scripts\Settings.xml "%appdata%\Jet Reports\" /Y ECHO Jet Enabled>%appdata%\Jet-Enabled.txt :SKIP
I decided what would be best, is to prevent the script from running if the user already has jet enabled.
A simple way, possibly not the best, is to just create a text file to say it has been enabled.
The batch file checks if the file exists, and if it does, it does nothing else and just closes.
If the file does not exist, it runs the activators silently without the /V, copies the default settings.xml into the users profile, and then creates the text file to say the process has completed.
Again, possibly not the best method, but it's quick and effective :)
Hopefully someone out there may also find this useful.
Eds -
Jet Reports Historic Posts Hi Eds,
I'm glad you are enjoying the centralized settings and Jet admin console. There is definitely more work that will be done and improvements coming there I think over time.
As far as activation, I believe Jet.Activator.exe actually runs silently by default if you run it from the command line (you could easily test this of course to be sure, but I'm pretty sure). It only runs with a UI if you run it with the /V argument which is how the Jet installer runs it. So you could literally run that every time a user logs in and it should work.
If you actually wanted to write a script to do activation, Excel stores its add-in settings in the registry in HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Office/{version number}/Excel/Options. There are a series of keys called OPEN, OPEN1, OPEN2, etc. with paths to open any XLA or XLAM add-ins when Excel starts.
Jet does store its application settings in %APPDATA%\Jet Reports. If you're using centralized data sources, I imagine the only file each user would need out of there would be the Settings.xml file. I hope that helps!
Regards,
Hughes
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