Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Adding image to Add/Remove program

You might have noticed that when your installer is created using InstallAnywhere, the default icon is shown (probably ZeroG icon). To customize your product according to the look and feel of your comany its very important to add a customized icon of your company that is product specific.
This task is very easy to achieve, you just need to 'Set Windows Registry Entry' action to do it.
In your uninstaller registry key (eg: \\HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\uninstall\MyProduct) create an entry named "DisplayIcon" with the value set to the full path to the icon you want to use. This means you'll need to install the icon file with your application.
There's also a host of other keys that IA doesn't automatically generate that you can manually create.
If you need any more detail pertaining to the issue browse through MSDN site for more details.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Pushing Install Updates to Customers

Dear readers all of you who has been involved in authoring installation projects must know the pain of IT companies in maintaining their product at the customer end. When a product goes through a release cycle the most important aspect of the company is to market the product, the most sell able aspects of the great products in the market is their ease of deployment and keeping it updated.
Companies spend millions of $$ in maintaining in release cycle and some more millions to support it, so that they are ahead of their competitors in the market. Releasing fixes, providing updates in a timely manner is their top priority so that they can win the confidence of their customers and keep the market growing for then.
But you all must realize that it requires huge investments for the IT companies for creating a dedicated support network for their customers to keep them updated with the latest fixes. Imagine a software which can update itself without any manual intervention, a system where the Administrator need not worry about reading the documentation before installing the updated manually, a huge enterprise system without going down for a single second updates itself !!
I think you must not have got surprised from the above statements, you might have already seen this "Windows Updates", "Java Updates" and millions of similar updates notification that might have gone un noticed!
These features are a must have for installers and frankly speaking they are very easy to achieve, just a few clicks during installation and here you are. All your customers will be using your latest version of the software and you can end up saving thousands of $$ on support calls.
You can add this feature in your installation product by using FLEXnet Connect from Macrovision.
All you need to do is add an update manager in your installation product, then list updates that will be pushed to the customers and you are done.
Some of the key benefits of using the FLEXnet Connect are listed below

Cut Costs with Electronic Software Delivery
Cut support costs by keeping users on your most current version
Cut product fulfillment, upgrade delivery, and renewal costs
Increase customer satisfaction by proactively delivering updates
Improve Customer Communication with In-Product Messaging
Deliver marketing messages to customers and evaluators as they use your software
Target users based on their product version, location, entitlement status, and more
Reach all of your customers directly, even if they purchased through a reseller
Improve Marketing and Development with Customer Data
Better understand your user base with data on total customer size, versions in use, and upgrade patterns
Learn how customers value your software by seeing which features are most popular
Use real customer data to create better marketing campaigns and more competitive products

For more details over the product visit Macrovision site