Google & Group Policy

Google has increasingly been getting involved in the Enterprise with its push of Google Apps for Education and Business.  Along with this they have finally offered their applications with an MSI and Administrative Templates (ADM or ADMX) to manage them through Group Policy.  The problem with this, however, is that they're not very good at letting us know when they have added MSIs and Administrative Templates, or when they have been updated.  I am going to office links to everything I have discovered here:

MSI:

Google Chrome

Google Cloud Connect

Google Chat Plug-In (My previous post explains how to get the MSI out of it)

Google Earth (Download the EXE via the 'Advanced Setup' option.  Extract its contents using 7Zip and you will then have the MSI)

Group Policy Administrative Templates:

Google Update ADM (Allows you to manage Google Update and the update/installation options for many of their other pieces of software)

Google Chrome ADM & ADMX (Zip file includes ADM and ADMX, as well as documentation)

Misc. Settings:

Google Chrome - Customizations and Preferences


I get in the habit of downloading the Administrative Templates every month since they seem to be updated quite frequently without notice.  The Chrome template basically gets updated with every new stable release which tends to be at least once a month.

Deploying Google Talk Plug-in through Group Policy

If your organization is going to Google Apps and Gmail, you'll want to deploy the Google Chat Plug-in in order to do video chats.  The problem is that Google doesn't have a way of distributing this plug-in, nor do they offer an MSI......seemingly.  Follow these steps in order to get the Google Chat Plug-in MSI and deploy it via Group Policy.

1. Go to this link and click on 'click here' in order to download the GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe
2. Navigate to the following location:
• C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Update\Download\%guid% (Windows Vista/7)
• C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Update\Download (Windows XP)
• You may have to change your Folder Options to display Operating System Files
3. You now need to run the 'GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe.'  Once you execute it, at some point the 'googletalkpluginaccel.msi' will show in the above locations, depending on which OS you are running.  You'll want to copy and paste that MSI very quickly, as it'll be erased after the application finishes executing and installing.
4. This is the MSI that you'll want to deploy via Group Policy.  Be sure to edit it using the Orca tool and look at the Property table in order to determine the version of the plug-in.  It seems like this plug-in is updated every few weeks so you'll want to keep up-to-date with it.
5. Add it to a Software-Installation GPO and apply!