This article covers deploying Quickmap version 8 and it’s associated data via remote deployment tools, but would also be useful for a technician deploying Quickmap into a terminal services (RDS) environment. While the article might be useful for users who are upgrading from previous versions, it does not cover this subject.
Note: while we are happy to help and advise, we do not provide technical support for third party tools such as SCCM, Intune, Citrix Presentation Server, etc.
Deploying software with remote deployment tools, such as Microsoft Intune or SCCM can be easy or complex, depending on the software. Truthfully, Quickmap is probably towards the more complex end of the scale because of the number of factors and design decisions to consider. Because there are a lot of options to consider for your environment, the best way to approach the creation of a deployment first is to understand the architecture options for Quickmap, how Quickmap works and what install files are available. There are two things to consider in a Quickmap deployment: the initial deployment of software and data; and updating the data.
Initial Deployment
The initial deployment will include the deployment of:
- the data,
- pointing the client to the data,
- the Quickmap client,
- licensing and registration.
I recommend that you consider deploying each piece in that order.
1. Deploying The Data
Deploying the data is easy. First you need to decide whether you plan to host the data on a server or install it on each client. Here are the things you’ll need to consider that will help you make that decision:
- disk usage (see the Quickmap system requirements for information on how big the data is);
- whether you want clients to be able to work without a connection to the server (this might affect remote users and laptop users);
- and how you plan to continually update the data (see the section below regarding Updating The Data).
If you’re deploying the data to each client, you’ll need to update the data as part of the Initial Deployment, otherwise clients could be using old and potentially erroneous data (again, see the section below regarding Updating The Data).
Once you’ve decided on your architecture, deploying the data is simple because it’s just a case of copying the folder to where you want your data to reside and ensuring that clients have read permission to that folder and its contents. Finally, you’ll need to point the client to the data location, but this is covered in step 2, below.
The data can be obtained from a variety of Quickmap sources including a zip file of the data, a data-only bootstrap installer, a full bootstrap installer (client and data install) and the Quickmap Data Download Managers’ download. Any of these are valid ways to download and up-wrap the folder one time, so you can copy it into your deployment.
Aside from the above, you may have other types of Quickmap data that you wish to install, such as aerial photography. These packages will all contain files in a folder and a registry key that points the client to the folder structure (you can capture this information using packaging software).
In rare cases, you may have data you have created yourself, or custom data packages. These are not covered in this article. Please contact us if you need help with this.
2. Pointing The Client To The Data
For the client to know where the data directory is, a registry key is required. You can either capture this information using a packaging software or install Quickmap on a test computer, point it to the data location and look at the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Custom Software\Quickmap\Config\DataDir
To install Quickmap on a test computer, you’ll probably want to get a copy of a full installer (client and data), so please contact Quickmap for this if one hasn’t already been provided to you. The reason I recommend this, is because it’s common for users to point the registry to the wrong folder within the data directory and it’s good to go through a full install to ensure that Quickmap works in your environment anyway, as well as seeing the other install options and registry settings for familiarity.
3. Deploying The Quickmap Client
There are several ways to do this, but for simplicity I recommend deploying the Quickmap client using the following silent command line parameters exactly as listed below:
QSetup.exe -quiet -passive
There are a few places to acquire the QSetup.exe, but I recommend getting it from either an existing installed Quickmap data directory that was created from a full install file (which includes data and client) or preferably from the bundle on the download page. The only reason to use the QSetup.exe from an existing data directory would be if you wanted to install a specific older version of Quickmap because for example, if you have a difficult change control process that makes it difficult to install new software. I would recommend most users to use the download link to get the latest version of Quickmap with the latest features and bug-fixes.
4. Licensing And Registration
Finally, you’ll want to license and automatically register Quickmap so the users don’t have to do it. Please see this article on licensing and automatically registering Quickmap through the registry.
Updating The Data
Quickmap has regular updates to the data, so it’s important to think about how this data is to be deployed going forward. Your approach may be different, depending on whether you chose to deploy Quickmap with the data on each client or on a server. There are three ways that we provide the data to our customers: either via a bootstrap installer (not a good option for remote deployment); a zip file that’s emailed out to a specific email address; or via the Quickmap Data Download Manager (QDDM).
The QDDM is a good option if you have the data installed on a server because it will automatically do the update for you at a scheduled time as soon as the data is available. At the time of writing, the QDDM is free for one license, but costs extra for every copy of the QDDM that you want to install. Therefore it’s not an appropriate solution for an environment with lots of users with data installed on each client. However, the QDDM could be used as a way to download the data to one computer and then another solution to distribute it from there.
If you are rolling your own solution, you need to ensure that Quickmap is not in use while the data is being updated. Fortunately the Quickmap client checks every 30 seconds (or so?) for a file named qmap.lck in the data directory. If this file is detected, the client closes within 30 seconds and won’t start up until the qmap.lck file disappears. Therefore this mechanism can be used to manually update the data directory with new data (by copying it in, overwriting existing files).
