Upgrading Endnote Users

Question

We are about to go through the process of updating our users on mass so that they can submit their grants to NHMRC. They are a mix of Endnote 9/X1/X2. The NHMRC specifies X2 and we would like to apply the latest patch the fixes the Y2K10 bug as well!

Endnote's documentation only makes provisions for a manual backup then uninstall of the previous version then install of the new version then apply the patches then run the first run wizard and make the dock shortcut.

Does anybody have a better way to upgrade our 500 or so EndNote users?

Answer 1

Per the entry at AppDeploy.com, Endnote 10.x uses the Windows Installer natively for its installation. This is a Good Thing^TM.

It's unclear to me if Endnote 9 uses Windows Installer or not. If it does, then you've got an easy solution using either Group Policy (if these machines are joined to an Active Directory domain) or a script to use MSIEXEC to uninstall the old version and install the new version.

If the Endnote 9 doesn't use Windows Installer you're at the mercy of their uninstallation program re: performing a silent uninstall. If their uninstaller absolutely won't uninstall silently, with this number of machines, I'd consider snapshotting the machine's "before" and "after" states when uninstalling and writing a script that performs all the functions of their uninstaller silently. It'd be some work, but with potentially up to 500 machines the time savings would probably be worth it.

Ultimately, without seeing the application firsthand I can't give you any kind of step-by-step process. This is a good high-level overview of the process you'd need to apply. In a world where all these machines are joined to an Active Directory domain I could see this getting done in 6 - 12 man hours (less if Endnote 9 is MSI-based, more if the Endnote 9 uninstaller behaves poorly for your needs). That'd be a heck of a lot easier than visiting 500 PCs...