Greetings,

Our organization is in the early stages of implementing Skype for Business. I have been tasked to create a SCCM 2012 R2 software delivery of Lync 2013, and through Config Manager updates, we will bring it up to Skype for Business. Our organization has a mix of Office 2010 and 2013 x86.

From my research, it appears that Microsoft doesn't offer a straight Skype for Business msi client that I can use to easily deploy. It appears that you either install Lync as a component of Office 2013 or as a standalone, but through a similar install  process as Office, using the Office Customization Tool. My question is, when I am creating the Lync 2013 package via OCT, even though I am only installing Lync, wouldn't the Lync OCT process detect an initial install of Office and then remove it? In the "Remove previous installations" how can I prevent the Lync OCT from removing anything Office that is already installed?

Also, in the Lync OCT, there is the same "modify user settings" that you get in the full Office OCT, where you can manipulate various settings for Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. If there was a scenario where I wanted to push the Lync client to a system that has Office 2013, and does not have the Lync client enabled, could these Office settings in the Lync OCT muck up our existing config of Office? Is there any method in the Lync OCT to ignore the existing install of Office (either 2010 or 2013) and simply just install the Lync client?

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,

Greg- City of Victoria

Office "suites" (i.e. ProfessionalPlus, Standard), use OCT, just as standalone applications (i.e. Lync/SfB/Outlook/etc).

The customisation approach is the same, as long as the installation source is an MSI. (it's very different if C2R e.g. ODfB)

(MSFT don't offer MSI installers for all Office applications. And, getting an MSI is about to get harder - C2R is taking over from MSI)

Because OCT is based on a "productID" such as ProPlus or Standard, etc, the config.xml or the productID parameter you use with OCT is what instructs setup to take action upon.

But if you have Office2013ProPlus already installed with Lync/SfB=absent (that has a productID of ProPlus), and you then want to deploy Lync/SfB to that PC, you can't "install" ProPlus again as the method to enable Lync/SfB.
In this case, you need to "modify" the feature state for Lync/SfB to change it from absent, to be local/enabled/present.

Or, depending upon the product, there may be a standalone MSI installer for that product (as there once was for ODfB, but now it's only C2R for that).
The MSI for example for Lync/SfB, which does not use the same productID as ProPlus, so, OCT/setup will allow those two "products" to co-exist.

Another factor, is the MSI ProductCode/GUID : ProPlus and Lync/SfB MSI installers for these two "products" do have differing MSI ProductCode/GUIDs, this allows the Windows Installer database on the PC to treat them as independent software titles (although you and I both know that either of the two
products" can create the lync.exe of the same name in the same folder)