Is there any way to run an unattended setup of the Baan Client (BW_063) ?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Dieter

BW uses the Installshield 3 installer to perform the setup of BW on BaanIV (and for Baan 5 until 7.3a.133). Installshield supports so-called "silent installation" by using the -s option on the command line.
You will have to create a response file (.iss) which defines the parameters to be entered during setup. You can create such a file by just "recording" a setup using the -r option.
But you can find out how this works in detail by having a short look on the internet or on the installshield web site.
You will also find many examples on the internet, like here; http://support.previo.com/stacroot/technote/RepNT/9014.shtm


regards, Ivo

Ivo,

Great to see folks from Baan helping those of us in the field. Now that you have started the ball rolling how about the following:
Is there a way to ensure that a particular version of BW or higher is running on the clients when the client attempts connection to the Baan server. In case the version number does not match, is there a way to automatically update the client?

Sometime ago we had an issue where the barcode printing was changed on the Baan server side. The codes sent to the client were different. This needed a new version of BWPrint to work. The occassional old version of BWPrint the organisation would cause issues with this. If we had control the server about which clients could connect it would be great.

Hi Mohanavamsi Potluru,

I think there are two possible ways to do this; by using SMS to remotely maintain the new MSI based BW installers or by using central deployment;

-SMS
As of 7.3a.133 and later BW is only delivered as a MSI based installer. Before you could choose between installshield and MSI. Using SMS you can easily remotely maintain BW clients when they are MSI enabled. You can read more about this on the microsoft web page i guess. Note that any BW client for Baan 5 is backwards compatible accross all Baan 5 versions. So 7.3a will work on Grieg, Verdi and Corelli also.

- central deployment
Even more easy would be to use central deployment offered by BW or Worktop. In this scenario you do not install BW clients at all. Instead, you install the BW client only on a file server. Any client "downloads" the version from the server at runtime and thus ensures any client to run the same version as the file server. As enhanced interface you could use Worktop (which is the new user interface replacing BW) on top of BW which offers much more central deployment features and automates the file server setup process.

Regards, Ivo

Ivo,

We do have SMS at this point of time. Also we use Citrix servers for users to login to Baan. So at this site the issue of version of client and version of portingset on the server being out of sync is not too bad.

My suggestion is that Baan have a control mechanism which allows or denies a connection from a client of version below the one specified in a tools table. And give the option for the customer to fill in a message in this table which will be showed to anyone trying to login to Baan with a client that is not supported.

Speaking of client versions, is there a function in Baan that returns the client version?

Vamsi,

Please refer to the case info I logged at the BaaN support site.

Case 955521 - Find Worktop Version.


Solution description:
VERSION(S):
BaanIVc4 SP9
iBaan ERP 5.0c (also known as Corelli): SP5 or later, or SP4 with "SP3 tools update"
iBaan ERP 5.2a

Required BW version:
B40c.59 or higher for BaanIVc,
7.1a.128 or higher for iBaan ERP 5.0c/5.2a

Supported OS: Windows 95/98/NT4/2000/XP

SITUATION IDENTIFIED IN: Worktop

SITUATION DESCRIPTION:
This solution provides the latest version of Worktop.

Notes:
1. Each Worktop 2.2.x version is a full version.
(In case of version 2.1, firstly the full version needed to be installed, and afterwards the update versions)

2.Translations are not delivered with this Worktop install. Only the english language is delivered by each 2.2 version.
Other available languages can be downloaded as "Language Packs" from solution 123395.

SOLUTION DESCRIPTION:
Worktop Version: 2.2.19

Prashanth,

We do not use Worktop. I am not sure if it is available for Baan 5b. My questions to Ivo stand.

Vamsi,

I found the version file in the path -


C:\Program Files\Baan\Baan Windows\bin>type Version.txt
7.3.23.117


The Windows adminstrator can make a tool and parse this file to find the info using SMS package etc. I do not have more details on that but I know its possible and you have to explore.

Thanks Prashanth. Could we wait for Ivo to answer before we both become "Super Gurus" by trading messages :).

Hi Vamsi,

Currently Worktop is only available on BaanIVc4, 5.0c and 5.2a. So 5b is not supported. If you really like to have Worktop available on 5b it's best you enter a change request for it in Scopus.

Regarding the version issue; at this time there is no function in Baan that returns the client version. So there is no way the bshell can determine the client version and check whether the Baan client should be allowed to connect.

The only fullproof way to request the version of the BW client would be to do this programmatically, using the Windows API for requesting .exe properties (GetFileVersionInfo()). When you would read it from version.txt for example the check could easily be bypassed and coincidently removing version.txt would cause problems. Worktop uses the fullproof method to identify the BW client version and pushes a newer version if necessary. You can very easily write a c++ app which requests the BW file version of a particular client this way.
By the way, Worktop 2.2.19 supports the -v option and will show the About dialog containing Worktop, Internet Explorer, TopTier and HTML Help version information.

So summarized; currently checking the BW client version is not supported. To address this BW should be enhanced and a Baan function should be created to perform the check. Again, if you would like to have this functionality it's best to log a change request for it in Scopus.

Regards, Ivo

What i did was install the client on a pc, configured it with the settings, then created a MSI package and i deploy it via GPO. The would have to be a windoze 2k domain. So far it has been working great.

Ivo,

We have Worktop running very smoothly with BaanIVc3. I had very few patches to apply to make it work. Perhaps SSA Global coud cert Worktop for BaanIVc3.

Now if only PMC would work for BaanIVc3 I would be a very happy person.

Jason

Hi Vamsi,

Currently Worktop is only available on BaanIVc4, 5.0c and 5.2a. So 5b is not supported. If you really like to have Worktop available on 5b it's best you enter a change request for it in Scopus.

Regarding the version issue; at this time there is no function in Baan that returns the client version. So there is no way the bshell can determine the client version and check whether the Baan client should be allowed to connect.

The only fullproof way to request the version of the BW client would be to do this programmatically, using the Windows API for requesting .exe properties (GetFileVersionInfo()). When you would read it from version.txt for example the check could easily be bypassed and coincidently removing version.txt would cause problems. Worktop uses the fullproof method to identify the BW client version and pushes a newer version if necessary. You can very easily write a c++ app which requests the BW file version of a particular client this way.
By the way, Worktop 2.2.19 supports the -v option and will show the About dialog containing Worktop, Internet Explorer, TopTier and HTML Help version information.

So summarized; currently checking the BW client version is not supported. To address this BW should be enhanced and a Baan function should be created to perform the check. Again, if you would like to have this functionality it's best to log a change request for it in Scopus.

Regards, Ivo

Thanks Jason. I had given up on 'worktop' when I found at several places that it was meant for c4 and above. What are tha patches you loaded? Do you think we can port it to c2 also?

When I try installing BaanERP silently it won't install. I get ResultCode=-12 (from log file). I recorded installation using:
setup.exe -r -f1"C:\setup.iss"
Does anyone know how to fix this?

Setup.iss
[InstallShield Silent]
Version=v3.00.000
File=Response File
[DlgOrder]
Dlg0=SdWelcome-0
Count=6
Dlg1=SdLicense-0
Dlg2=SdAskDestPath-0
Dlg3=SdSelectFolder-0
Dlg4=SdStartCopy-0
Dlg5=MessageBox-0
[SdWelcome-0]
Result=1
[SdLicense-0]
Result=1
[Application]
Name=Baan
Version=Baan ERP
Company=Baan
[SdAskDestPath-0]
szDir=C:\Program Files\Baan
Result=1
[SdSelectFolder-0]
szFolder=Baan ERP
Result=1
[SdStartCopy-0]
Result=1
[MessageBox-0]
Result=1

Install.log
[InstallShield Silent]
Version=v3.00.000
File=Log File
[ResponseResult]
ResultCode=-12

we've got the same error message "ResultCode=-12 ". Has anyone an idea to solve this problem. We need a working syntax for unattend installation of BaaN IV and V client.