TI-Nspire™ Network Administrator Support

TI-Nspire™ computer software utilises standardised methodology and technologies built into Microsoft® Software Installer foundation (MSI). This facilitates network deployments by allowing the Network Manager to use any number of popular standardised distribution and installation methods. Installation methodologies may vary from: being started from a network resource, pre-staged on a local hard drive, placed within a logon script, deployed via group policy, or "packaged" and deployed using Enterprise Management platforms such as Microsoft® SMS 2003 R2 or Novell® ZENworks 7.0.

To assist Network Managers in planning and deploying TI-Nspire™ software using their preferred deployment process, we have provided some sample installation scenarios along with some helpful hints.

The second most important consideration for planning and deployment is that for successful activation of the licence, the computer must have an available Internet connection.

1. Receive licence file as an attachment in the original purchase confirmation email from TI.
2. Determine the names (NetBIOS names) of the target computers and update the email .csv attachment with the target computer names.
3. Upload combined licence file and computer names to the TI network deployment tools site.
4. Save the generated license.sc file.
5. Determine if you wish to authenticate from a central server or share or if you wish to deploy both the license.sc and setup.exe as a "package."
6. If you wish to authenticate from a network share, have you created the share with read-only privileges?
7. Have you updated the Deployment.cf file to include the location of the license.sc file?
8. Do you wish to copy the installation logs to a log share on the network? If so, have you created a share drive location for the network log that has read and write privileges?
9. Have you updated the Deployment.cf file to include the location of the log network share drive?
10. Which deployment tool are you using?
11. Make sure that whichever tool or method that is chosen, that the installation occurs under a local administrator account or is targeted to the computer name and not a user.

After purchasing the network deployment kit, you (or your purchaser) will receive an order confirmation email from TI that includes an attached file (in .CSV format) containing three comma-delimited columns. The first column is a product description, the second column is a licence number and the third column is a serial number. It is important that this file be maintained in a secure location to prevent misuse of the licence/serial number pairs. This file is not yet capable of supporting licensing and activation for a network deployment. In order to maintain the 'one computer to one licence' licensing security model, additional steps must be taken to create a licensing file that can be used by the installation process to license and activate the TI-Nspire™ computer software during the network deployment process. You may choose to import the confirmation attachment into Excel, or you may choose to use Notepad or a text editor to manipulate and read the file. The information that must be added to the file includes the names of the computers targeted for network deployment. This process is covered in detail in the Resources section. After adding the computer names to the fourth column, this file is uploaded to website, where it is encrypted. The file produced as a result of the encryption is the License.sc file.

To illustrate how different licensing strategies affect different Network Managers, consider an example where someone has purchased 50 licences. A confirmation email is sent to the email address listed at the time of purchase. This email includes an attachment with 50 licence number/serial number pairs. A Network Manager may need to immediately deploy to 10 computers in a 'test lab'. After gathering those 10 computer names and adding them to the fourth row of the licence file the information is uploaded to a website, where it is encrypted and then downloaded as the License.sc file. The License.sc file is then used for the network deployment to the 10 lab computers. As computer names become known for the 40 remaining licences, the Network Manager has two choices: one is create a second or third, etc., version of the License.sc file and keep each version of the License.sc file separate from each other (or compressed into a software distribution package); the second choice is to simply maintain one License.sc file and overwrite it either on a centralised licence share drive or by compiling it into the latest (or even previous using versioning) software package. Your choice depends on your personal preferences for maintaining software licensing and installation source code for your network.

As mentioned previously, TI-Nspire™ software has been enhanced to be network-admin friendly. This is accomplished by having the installation process look for the existence of and read the information contained in, a flat text configuration file called Deployment.cf. As long as the Deployment.cf file is in the same directory or in the working directory for the setup.exe installation file it will supply the installation process with either a one or two- variable configuration. The first variable is the location of the License.sc file. The path to the License.sc in the Deployment.cf file can point anywhere on the local drive or on the network. (However, the installation account or user must have security rights be able to connect to and read the License.sc file). Using the Deployment.cf file can be very useful to overall licensing strategy if you choose to keep a single version of License.sc on a centralised read-only network share. The second variable that can be used in the Deployment.cf file is the location of the installation logging output file. By default, the installation log is written to a path within the user profile that runs the install. To simplify the determination of the overall success of a network deployment a Network Manager may choose to have the installation logs written to a network share drive (with read/write access to the installation account) to quickly determine the outcome of the most recent network deployment.

You may choose to use one or both configuration variables, or you may choose not to include this file in your network package. This file is provided as a convenience to allow licence and logging flexibility management. It is not a mandatory file requirement for network deployment.

Deployment vehicles for software delivery and installation are as varied as the number of network software deployments that are managed. They may range from running the network installation from the workstation as a "pull" install, to Enterprise Management Platforms such as Microsoft® SMS or Novell® ZENworks. However the software installation is accomplished, the installation process must have access to the Internet (for authentication and activation) and must have access to the License.sc file created from the encryption web site. We provide suggestions for SMS and ZENworks software packaging, as well as some simple methods for TI-Nspire™ software installation as part of our content offering on the Resources page.

Step One: Open the licence.csv file in an application where you can edit .csv files such as Excel. Add a fourth column. This column is for the names of the computers intended to receive TI-Nspire™ computer software. This file must be saved in .csv format.

Important: Make sure to remove formatting in columns before moving to Step two. Make sure that if you are using Excel that your columns are not being formatted in exponential form such as Scientific notation.

Step Two: Upload the licence.csv file to the encryption web site. (The URL for this web site is provided in the order confirmation email. Follow the instructions for network license configuration. Download the file back to your machine. The file should be named license.sc.

Step Three: The configured file can be located in one of two places in the deployment process. You can place the configured licence.sc file on a network share that can be accessed from the client during the deployment process, or you can package the license.sc file with your delpoyment package.

Step Four: Edit the Deployment.cf file to add the location for the license.sc file.

Step Five: Create a deployment package that is best suited for your environment. Your package should include the Deployment.cf file and the TI-Nspire™ computer software executable, and possibly the licence.sc file. Please see 'how-to' documents for example deployment configurations.