Organization Wide Roll-out / Installation Parameters

This guide is for IT administrators who deploy presentaid to many users. Follow the steps in order. Only step 1 is required.

1. Before you start: check the requirements and your network
2. Install presentaid with the MSI
3. Connect the company Shared Location (optional)
4. Control settings centrally (optional)
5. Test with a pilot group, then roll out

If something doesn't work, see Troubleshooting.

Before You Start

What You Need

Requirements on Client Machines

• Windows 10 or later, with a desktop version of Microsoft Office. See Installation for details.
• .NET Framework 4.8
• Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime

Installing presentaid itself doesn't need admin rights, but these two components do. Add them to your base image or deploy them first if they are missing. The MSI doesn't check for them, so without them it installs normally but the add-in doesn't load.

Network

Allow these addresses through your proxy and firewall:

What presentaid Sends

Presentations and data stay on the user's computer. For license activation and validation, presentaid sends the following to my.presentaid.com over HTTPS:

• License key or activation ID
• Computer name, Windows domain and user name
• presentaid, Office and Windows version

If the server can't be reached, presentaid keeps working until the license's expiry date and tries again later.

Step 1: Install presentaid

presentaid installs per user, into the user's own AppData folder. Run the MSI in the context of the user, not as SYSTEM. Otherwise it installs for the wrong account.

All parameters are optional, and you can combine them freely:

Deploy With Microsoft Intune

Package the MSI as a Win32 app with the Microsoft Win32 Content Prep Tool, then use these values:

Assign the app to a user group.

Deploy With Other Tools

Any tool works if it runs the command as the signed-in user, such as a logon script or a user-context package in Configuration Manager.

Deploy New Versions

SHAREDLOCATION, SETTINGSPRESETS and SUPPRESSUPDATES stay in place across upgrades, so you don't need to pass them again. An upgrade removes LICENSEKEY if you leave it out, but users who are already activated stay activated.

To let presentaid update itself again, install with SUPPRESSUPDATES="false".

If you don't set SUPPRESSUPDATES, presentaid updates itself and you have nothing to deploy: Updates

These three values also stay after an uninstall. To remove them, delete SharedLocation, SettingsPresets and SuppressUpdates from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\bkt solutions\presentaid.

Step 2: Connect the Company Shared Location

The company Shared Location gives everyone the same templates, slides and elements.

1. Create the location, on SharePoint (recommended) or a file share: How to Work with Shared Libraries
2. Connect to it once with an account that has write access. This creates the library folders, which read-only users need.
3. Give users read-only access. Keep write access for the people who maintain the content.
4. Pass the location to all users, with SHAREDLOCATION or the Company shared location policy.

Users Can't Remove It

Users can't change or remove the company Shared Location, and see "Managed" in its place, when either of these applies:

• You set it with SHAREDLOCATION or the policy.
• The user has read-only access to a location that contains a library.

Users with write access can still change a location that you didn't set. So can anyone if the location can't be reached and you didn't set it, so that a mistyped path can be corrected. To rule this out on laptops that are often offline, set the location with SHAREDLOCATION or the policy.

Step 3: Control Settings Centrally

Choose a method based on whether users should be able to change the setting:

If a setting is configured in more than one place, the first of these wins: Group Policy or Intune, company options, the user's own choice, the preset, the built-in default.

presentaid reads these settings when the Office application starts, so changes apply after a restart.

Option 1: Group Policy or Intune

Download the policy templates. The ZIP contains two files:

These files only make the policies available in your management tool. Nothing changes on users' machines until you configure a policy and assign it.

Group Policy in a Domain

1. On a machine with the Group Policy Management Console, open the Central Store: \\your-domain\SYSVOL\your-domain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions
2. If the folder doesn't exist, create it by copying the whole of C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions there. Don't create it empty: once it exists, the editor reads templates only from there.
3. Copy presentaid.admx into PolicyDefinitions.
4. Copy presentaid.adml into PolicyDefinitions\en-US. Use this folder even on non-English systems.
5. In Group Policy Management, create a Group Policy Object, link it to the OU that holds your users or computers, and open it for editing.
6. Go to Policies → Administrative Templates → presentaid, under either Computer Configuration or User Configuration, and set the policies you need.

Microsoft Intune

1. In the Intune admin center, go to Devices → Manage devices → Configuration → Import ADMX and select Import.
2. Upload presentaid.admx and presentaid.adml, then wait until the status shows Available.
3. On the Policies tab, create a new policy for Windows 10 and later, using Templates → Imported Administrative Templates.
4. Set the policies you need under presentaid, then assign the profile to a group.

Intune's menu names change from time to time. If these differ, search Microsoft's documentation for "import ADMX".

A Single Machine, for Testing

Run these steps as an administrator:

1. Copy presentaid.admx to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions.
2. Copy presentaid.adml to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US.
3. Open gpedit.msc and go to Administrative Templates → presentaid.

Choosing a Value

To let users decide again, set a policy back to Not Configured, not Disabled.

Company shared location is the one policy that takes a value: select Enabled and enter the SharePoint URL or folder path.

A computer policy applies to every user of the machine, and beats a user policy for the same setting.

Check That It Worked

On a client machine, apply the policy. For Group Policy, run the command below. For Intune, sync the device from Settings → Accounts → Access work or school.

Then check that the values arrived. Use HKCU instead of HKLM for user policies.

Close and reopen the Office application. Enforced settings now appear greyed out in presentaid's settings.

Without the Templates

You can also write the registry values directly, with any tool that runs with admin rights. Use a DWORD of 1 or 0:

The company Shared Location is a string value named Company, under the key ...\presentaid\Libraries.

Option 2: Company Options in presentaid

Anyone with write access to the company Shared Location sees a Company section in presentaid's settings. Options set there are stored in the file config.xml in that location, and apply to everyone who uses it. They need the location to be reachable.

Option 3: Presets at Installation

Add SETTINGSPRESETS to the install command, using the names from the table below, each followed by =true or =false and separated by semicolons:

A preset doesn't override a choice the user has already made.

Hide License Details

Turn on Hide license details from users, with any of the three methods. Users then see "Managed by your organization" instead of the license key, expiry date, activation field and purchase link. If activation fails, they are asked to contact IT.

Settings You Can Manage

Step 4: Test With a Pilot Group

Before the full rollout, sign in on a test machine as a standard user and check:

1. The presentaid tab appears in PowerPoint and Excel.
2. presentaid is activated without asking for a key.
3. Settings → Shared Locations shows the company location, marked "Managed".
4. Items from the company location appear in the libraries.
5. Enforced settings are greyed out in the settings.

Troubleshooting

Need help with your rollout? Contact us.