Administrator's Guide

Learning Essentials for Microsoft® Office

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Learning Essentials for Microsoft® Office is a desktop application that works with Microsoft Office to provide students and teachers a custom Office environment. Learning Essentials includes curriculum-based templates and toolbars for Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint®, and Microsoft Office Excel. It also includes academic tutorials and project assistance from leading education publishers. This guide describes the options available for curriculum and IT administrators to customize and deploy Learning Essentials.

Contents

Compliance with License Requirements

New Features in Learning Essentials

Planning the Deployment of Learning Essentials

System Requirements

Deciding Where to Store Content and the User Center File

Storing Content Centrally

Customizing the User Center File

Deploying Learning Essentials

Updating the User Center File

More Information

Appendix A - Language Codes

If you perform a remote deployment of Learning Essentials for Microsoft® Office in your organization, you accept the Software License Terms (formerly “End User License Agreement” or “EULA”) for Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office on behalf of each end user in your organization.

For more information on the licensing rights to Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office products, refer to the Software License Terms that accompany the software.

This release of Learning Essentials includes support for SCORM® output using HunterStone THESIS and four new features designed to assist curriculum and IT administrators:

1. The ability to store Learning Essentials content and User Center files in a centralized location, and install only the program files on client computers. By installing only the program files on client computers, you can minimize the amount of disk space required and the time required to copy files during Setup.
2. Support for Active Directory, Microsoft Systems Management Server, and third-party configuration management solutions to help make deploying Learning Essentials on multiple computers more efficient.
3. The Content Development Kit is included in Learning Essentials Setup.
4. The ability to open and customize multiple User Center files from a single computer. With this release of Learning Essentials, you can create shared User Center files for different groups of students or educators.

When you install Learning Essentials in a network environment, you must make the following decisions:

• Do you want to store Learning Essentials content on each client computer or in a single, central location? Learning Essentials content includes the default content (templates and tutorials), content add-ins that you acquire, and content add-ins that you create by using the Learning Essentials Content Development Kit. If you want to store Learning Essentials content centrally, you can store it in a shared folder on a server or in a Windows® SharePoint® Services document library.
• Do you want to customize the User Center file? The User Center file is an XML file that determines how the content appears in the User Center. Customizing the User Center file lets you control what content appears in the User Center for student or educators, and how it is displayed. If you store a customized User Center file centrally, multiple computers can share it and you only have to manage a single file.
• How do you want to deploy and configure the application? Learning Essentials for Students must be installed but you can also opt to install Learning Essentials for Educators and the Content Development Kit (CDK). You will need to determine which components you want to install on each client computer.

Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office requires the following minimum system configuration:

• Personal computer with a 600-megahertz (MHz) or faster processor.
• 256 megabytes (MB) of RAM or more recommended.
• Available hard disk space:
  295 MB if installing only the program files
  320 MB if installing Learning Essentials for Students
  485 MB if installing Learning Essentials for Students and Learning Essentials for Educators
  490 MB if installing Learning Essentials for Students, Learning Essentials for Educators, and the Content Development Kit
• Microsoft Windows® 2000 with Service Pack 4 (SP4) or later, Windows XP SP2 or later, or Windows Vista.
• Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher-resolution monitor
• Macromedia Flash 7.0 or later
• Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office XP, Word 2003, Word 2002, Excel 2003, Excel 2002, PowerPoint 2003, or PowerPoint 2002

It is recommended that you install Learning Essentials content and the User Center file centrally only if the client computers are always connected to the network. The following table provides guidelines for when to centralize content and when to store content locally.

Follow these steps to store content in a shared folder on a server or in a SharePoint document library.

1. Install Learning Essentials on a computer that has Microsoft Office installed. This installs the Learning Essentials program and the default content on that computer.
2. Install any Learning Essentials add-ins you want to make available.
3. Create a shared folder or SharePoint document library and assign appropriate permissions to users. For example, content creators, curriculum administrators, and IT administrators should have read/write permissions. Students and teachers should have read-only permissions. For information about creating SharePoint document libraries, see Help for Windows SharePoint Services.

   Note   If you store content in a SharePoint document library, make sure that the files with the .exe and .chm file extensions are not blocked. If EXE and CHM file types are blocked, users will not be able to access Help and other product features. Open SharePoint Central Administration and under Security Configuration, click Manage blocked file types, and then delete the .exe and .chm file extensions from the list.

4. Copy the root content folder to the shared location. In a default Learning Essentials installation, this folder is located at
   C:\Program Files\Learning Essentials\1.0\<language>, where <language> is a path specified in Appendix A. For example, a US English content folder is typically located at: C:\Program Files\Learning Essentials\1.0\en\us\, and \us is the root content folder.
   • To copy content to a shared folder, browse to the root content folder on your computer. Copy the root content folder to the shared folder on the server.
   • To copy content to a SharePoint document library, open the SharePoint site and navigate to the document library. Under Select a View, click Explorer View. Drag the root content folder from the client computer to the SharePoint document library.

Note   The default root folder contains a Teacher folder and a Student folder, as well as content folders from add-in content created by using the Content Development Kit. If you do not want users to be able to access all the folders under the root folder, copy only those folders that you want users to be able to access. However, if you do not store the Teacher and Student folders in a common root content folder, educators will not have access to the content for students and some links may be broken. This can be avoided by explicitly using the full path in links, instead of using the ContentDir subkey in the registry. For more information about the ContentDir registry subkey, see Registry Subkeys later in this guide.

You can modify the User Center file for educators or students. The default filenames are Teacher TOC.xml and Student TOC.xml. Both files are located in the root content folder.

1. From the computer on which you installed Learning Essentials, open Learning Essentials in administration mode by typing UserCenter.exe /admin at the command prompt. This will open Learning Essentials with an additional menu, Administration.
2. On the Administration menu, click Open User Center File.
3. Select the User Center file that you want to customize. You can start with a default User Center file and merge it with any add-ins installed on the computer, or you can start with a custom User Center file if you have already created one.

   Note   If you select an add-in that is already merged into the User Center file that you selected, duplicate entries are not displayed.

4. Customize the User Center file as needed. You can add, rename, delete, and rearrange items, as well as edit the category headings, subcategory headings, and subcategory titles. For information about customizing the User Center file, see Learning Essentials Help.
5. On the Administration menu, click Save User Center File. When you are ready to deploy the User Center file, save it to a shared folder or copy it to your SharePoint document library.

This section describes the methods that you can use to install Learning Essentials remotely.

Important

• Before you install Learning Essentials remotely, make sure that the client computers have Macromedia Flash 7.0 or later installed. You can deploy Flash from the Support folder on the installation disc. If Flash is not installed on client computers, users will receive an error message when they attempt to access some features.
• If client computers already have Learning Essentials installed, customizations that users have made to locally stored User Center files will be lost when you install. To save a user's custom User Center file, copy it from C:Documents and Settings\<user_name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Learning Essentials\1.0\<language>, where <language> is a path specified in Appendix A.

If you are managing computers in an Active Directory® directory service environment, you can use the Software Installation and Maintenance feature of Group Policy to deploy Learning Essentials on client computers. You can use a logon script with a batch file. If you assign the script to the user, it runs when the user logs on. If you assign the script to the computer, it is run on startup. Alternatively, you can use a Group Policy object to publish a .zap file. Users will need to go to Add or Remove Programs to initiate Setup.

If you are not already using an update management solution such as Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 or Software Update Services (SUS), we recommend that you use Group Policy for managing the deployment of software. For information about Group Policy, see the following white paper:
Group Policy Infrastructure White Paper. For information about using SMS 2003 to deploy applications, see the SMS 2003 documentation.

Installation Files

Learning Essentials has four main Windows Installer Package (.msi) files.

• Lrngessl.msi installs the Learning Essentials program files, the .NET Framework, and the Content Development Kit (CDK).
• Student.msi installs the student content.
• Teacher.msi installs the educator content. 
• Thesis.msi installs the HunterStone THESIS SCORM tools. 

The registry subkeys for Learning Essentials are:

• TOCPath
• DisableCustomization
• ContentDir
• TOC Version

These subkeys are located at:

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Learning Essentials\1.0\<language>\Student\

and

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Learning Essentials\1.0\<language>\Teacher\

where Student contains the subkeys for Learning Essentials for Students, Teacher contains the subkeys for Learning Essentials for Educators, and <language> is a code specified in Appendix A.

The TOCPath subkey is used to provide the path to the User Center file. If you set this subkey, Setup disables customization on client computers by setting the DisableCustomization subkey to 1. The ContentDir subkey is used to provide the path to the content.  If you want to change the storage location for the content after Learning Essentials is installed, simply update the ContentDir registry subkey.

The TOC Version subkey is used to specify when client computers must get new User Center files. You can assign it any value that indicates a version. For example, you can provide a version number or a date for the value. TOC Version is located in the following subkeys, in addition to the subkeys in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree:

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Learning Essentials\1.0\<language>\Teacher\TOC Version

and

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Learning Essentials\1.0\<language>\Student\TOC Version  

The behavior of the TOC Version subkey in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree is described in the following table.

Setup Parameters

The following table lists the options that you can specify when you install Learning Essentials. To provide a parameter that includes a space, use quotation marks around the parameter.

When you update the User Center file, push a new value for the TOC Version registry subkey to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree. You can do this by creating a batch file to update the TOC Version subkey value and running this batch file remotely.

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office Home Page

Microsoft Office Home Page

SharePoint Products and Technologies Home Page

The following table lists the codes used for each language in the Registry, the Documents and Settings folder, and the Program Files folder.

Language	Code
Arabic	ar
Dutch	nl
English (United Kingdom)	en-gb (use en\gb for the Programs Files folder)
English (United States)	en-us (use en\us for the Program Files folder)
Finish	fi
French (France)	fr-fr (use fr\fr for the Programs Files folder)
German	de
Italian	it
Norwegian	no
Portuguese (Brazil)	pt-br (use pt\br for the Program Files folder)
Russian	ru
Spanish	es
Swedish	sv

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© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, MS-DOS, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Vista, Active Directory, PowerPoint, and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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