Deploying IE with IEAK

IN THE RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD of Web browsers, the number of available patches, add-ons, and upgrades is mind-boggling. As a systems administrator, your arduous task is to try to keep all your clients' browsers consistently working. As users customize their browsers, managing installations across an enterprise becomes increasingly challenging. Fortunately, Microsoft developed the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) to simplify the task of deploying a uniform customized Internet Explorer (IE) throughout your enterprise.

Not Just for ISPs
Administrators often overlook IEAK because they see the kit as a tool for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), software developers, or OEMs who bundle IE with their products. However, IEAK offers more than the capability to customize fancy options such as a company logo or default home page; the functionality and control that IEAK provides makes it a perfect tool for deploying a uniform browser configuration across an enterprise network.

IEAK lets you customize any options and plug-ins within IE for all languages and platforms that you need to support, and lets you create a deployment that is uniform across all your clients' desktops. I was skeptical because IEAK sounded too good to be true. But I found that this product lives up to its promise.

Jumping Through Hoops
To get started with IEAK, download the utility from Microsoft's IEAK Web site (http://ieak.microsoft.com). Because you'll be building a customized version of a Microsoft product (i.e., IE) with IEAK, Microsoft requires you to register your organization before you can download this tool. Registration is free; however, Microsoft requires you to submit quarterly updates that detail how many customized copies of IE you have deployed. This request is reasonable when you consider that you're modifying Microsoft's code for your purposes and repackaging it.

After you get your customization code, you're ready to download IEAK.

If you're downloading IEAK for the first time, make sure that you have an up-to-date copy of IE. The browser installed on the system that you're downloading IEAK to needs to be running the latest version of IE.

After you download the kit, launch the IEAKWIZ application from the default installation directory \ProgramFiles\IEAK. The first IEAK wizard screen will appear and begin walking you through the steps to create your customized IE deployment. Be sure your Internet connection is online, so that IEAK can check Microsoft's download sites and ensure that the latest versions of IE and its related components are available.

Sample Configuration
The IEAK wizard offers options to configure almost every aspect of IE, including a few components you might never have considered customizing. Because I can't detail every possible option, I'll walk you through a basic IE configuration that is suitable for most administrators and discuss the steps necessary to create a download site on an intranet server for IE 4.01.

For my example configuration, I'll deploy a customized version of IE 4.01 that includes preconfigured proxy settings and a default corporate home page. To ensure that nobody gets around the proxy server and accesses the Internet directly, I'll restrict the browser so users can't change the proxy option.

IEAK lets you build a download site similar to Microsoft's IE download sites, but on your servers. I'll set up the example installation site on an Internet Information Server (IIS) system named ARCHITECT4, and clients can start IE Active Setup from that server. I'll configure the Active Setup program to run as a silent installation, which means end users don't interact with the installation after they've launched it.