[nhenriqu]

We are looking for suggestions or best practices regarding the deployment of custom solutions for RE in the form of VBA or dlls created from VBA and/or VB .Net. We have a number of customizations that we are developing both in RE ( VBA ) and outside of RE ( API using VB .Net) for RE 7.83+. We have approx. 125-150 workstations and use GPO for centralized deployment.

Code developed for the runtime VBA envrionment can be easily be deployed, but there are many cases in which 'similar logic or functions' are used in our externally custom applications (i.e. run outside of RE) and we are considering a 'shared code' approach through complied dll's (in VBA or VB. Net).
The challenge with dll's is of course deployment ... and I wondered if anyone had anything suggestions, experience or thoughts regarding best practices or advice that we may consider.
Thx
Nigel

[DavidZ]

This is a good question and one that I went some way addressing in a blog post: RE-Decoded » Blog Archive » VBA: Inside or Out? . However I didn't really cover much in the way of deployment.

I would add this. If you create a VS2005 install project you can put your dll there and customise the deployment. You then create an msi install file that can be distributed throughout your organisation either through group policy. This is how I deploy all my new plugins or VBA modules whether they are VBA, VB6 or VB.NET and it works really well.

David

[nhenriqu]

Thanks David,
This confirms my thought that we can develop our "shared" code in VB .Net (VS 2005/08) add the COM layer and make them accessible to RE, etc. We looked at development in VBA as the alternative, but the VS 2005/08 IDE is much stronger for debugging, etc. and there are obvious differences in the language. So this does simplify things a bit.

I concur creating a 'well behaving' msi install package pushed out via GPO should solve the deployment issue, but had wondered if you had run into any issues if the control level (i.e. Power User, Standard User, etc) of the users to which the install applies. Here we have the majority of users as plain Standard XP users (not Power or Admin). Thoughts ?
Thx Nigel