Cooperate with Administrators

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

As more and more software is used in large networked enterprise settings, it is increasingly important to make your application easy to manage. The following guidelines relate to making your application manageable:

• Enable policy settings to uninstall and unadvertise your application. (Required)
• Provide an .adm system policy file for your application. (Required)
• Provide for disabling Run and Find dialogs. (Required)
• Support NoViewContextMenu in shell extensions. (Required)
• Call ShellExecute instead of CreateProcess. (Required)
• Support roaming users. (Best Practice)
• Do not collect single-user data during installation. (Best Practice)
• Support administrative additions during network install. (Recommended)
• Generate a disk image for multiple installs during network installation. (Recommended)
• Install shared files in shared locations during network installation. (Recommended)
• Support silent installs and push strategies during network installation. (Recommended)
• Do not require a local footprint during network install. (Recommended)
• Provide a diagnostic logging option. (Recommended)
• Do not assume write access to a user's machine. (Recommended)
• Support dynamic policy changes by handling WM_SETTINGCHANGE messages. (Recommended)
• Expose private policy keys where appropriate. (Best Practice)