App-V: Cisco IronPort Outlook Plug-In.

If you are using Office 2010 on Win7x64 you've pobably already seen the joys of getting it sequenced correctly. Well the headaches extend down the line. And poorly written plugins are the biggest issue I've seen so far.

In this case it is the Cisco IronPort plugin for Outlook that allows users to flag messages as spam or not in conjunction with the Cisco spam filter backend.

Nearest I can tell the problem lies in the fact that if you want FULL functionality from Office 2010 you have to use the 32-bit version, the ADK doesn't have full support for the 64-bit version. And due to...it being microsoft I guess...the only way to get it working is to sequence on Win7x86. Well when you go to sequence the IronPort plugin it does NOT translate over well AT ALL. Which is fair enough, there is a reason why they suggest sequencing on the same arch/level/os as your target machines. And sequencing it on Win7x64 doesn't work because your copy of office wasn't sequenced like that.

Making matters worse Cisco is AWFUL about error messages and logs. The error message you get when launching Outlook is literally just a message that tells you to contact your admin. The admin is instructed to run the diagnostic tool, which is fine but the registry errors I got in particular look something like this:

Trying to read registry information.

Result OK.

Failed to read registry information: Outlook.Addin.Cisco

Windows.Registry.Location does not exist.

Could they have told you exactly WHAT key they tried to read? Or exactly WHAT key they couldn't find? Of course. Do they? No.

So the fact that EVERYONE using outlook gets this plugin finally convinced me to bump it to the category I am LOATHE to bump things to..."sequenced with office"

Another app with this problem is Communicator 2007. So now my patches for Office, Communicator and IronPort are now all tied to one another...but at least it works...

The alternative it to mail a brick to Cisco and ask them to politely describe what the hell is missing, or the next one doesn't come FedEx. ;p (That's the two day old migraine talking, don't actually mail bricks...it's bad for your carbon footprint.)