First up, great product at great price!
I downloaded Openfire and had it up and running within 10 mins. Great!
I downloaded Spark in MSI format for trial deployment to a few Windows PCs on my corporate network, not so great.
Enhancement Requests:
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Allow the default server to be set in the MSI as a Property field using a MST so that a Sys Admin can configure this and save each user asking me “What is the server I’'m meant to use?”
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Integrate NTLM authentication to allow single-sign on in a Windows LDAP AD environment (Win boxen and Win serven) and allow this authentication to be set as default in the MSI so that every user does not ask the next obvious question “What username and password do I use?”
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Allow default locations (eg. the folder to open when sending files) to be set in the MSI as a Property field using a MST. In my situation I do not allow users any access to the local C drive and therefore the “Send files to this user” feature does not work as it tries to open %userprofile% by default.
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Allow all users to be added as friends by default at first startup as an option in the MSI as a Property field using a MST. My collaboration environment is simple, all staff should have all other staff on the local Jabber server added as friends by default.
Basically, the setup I’'m after is as follows:
a) Install local Openfire server and set Active Directory as LDAP authentication
b) Customise all Spark options as Properties in MSI file using a custom MST built using Orca or some other tool.
c) Deploy Spark using Group Policy.
d) When Spark starts user is automatically logged-in using NTLM single-sign on authentication to known local Jabber server
e) All staff are already added as friends so no “Add friend” steps need to be performed and users get straight into IMing
I’'m sure that such a scenario for deployment would be welcomed by many Sys Admins managing Windows-based environments as at least a basis for further customisation.
Simon