We have no easy to use tool for generating such an MST, because the demand was rather low and other features were much more important. But you can do it yourself if you're a little familiar with Windows Installer. It's not as easy as you probably would like, but it is doable. In this blog entry I will show you how to create a transform to

• set a specific installation folder
• select which features to install
• enable or disable CTI mode
• enable or disable starting SwyxIt after the setup

Preliminary Remarks

First of all you need an MSI editor. I use orca.exe which is part of the Microsoft Windows SDK. Unfortunately the SDK is a rather big download. Orca is hidden in the SDK's bin folder as orca.msi. You have to install the SDK first and install orca after that. I've not found an official download location for orca. You have to spend some bandwidth and download the SDK.

Because creating and using a Windows Installer Transform is no official use case we support and test, the setup is not perfectly prepared for transformations. To make it easier for you, I've created a basic transformation which extends SwyxIt!Setup a little bit. It's called SwyxItBaseTransform.mst. I cannot upload anything except pictures and PDFs to this website. The download is therefore named SwyxItBaseTransform.mst.pdf. Please remove the ".pdf" from the name after you downloaded it.

This description is based on SwyxIt v6.11 English language version. SwyxItBaseTransform.mst is made for that version. I've done some rudimentary tests with it. But this is for educational purposes only. Neither I or Swyx can guarantee that it works. Don't ask Swyx Support for help.

If you have a problem please leave a comment or contact me via the private message function of this web site. I will try to help you as my time allows.

Set an installation folder

Right-click on the SwyxIt!SetupEnglishUK.msi file and select Edit with Orca. You get a Window looking like this:

A Windows Installer file a database containing a lot of tables. You see the table names on the left and the table content on the right.

Now apply SwyxItBaseTransform.mst by selecting Apply Transform from the Transform menu. You get a standard file open dialog. Select SwyxItBaseTransform.mst. Orca now marked some tables in the left pane with a green bar. These are changed by the transformation.

Select table CustomAction. Search for a table row marked with a green rectangle. It should look like this:

This row, added by the transform defines a custom action to perform. It set the installation folder to the path defined in the Target Column. SwyxItBaseTransform.mst uses c:\SwyxIt. Double click the cell and enter the full path you would like to use.

Now save your transformation by selecting Generate Transform from the Transform menu. You get a standard "Save As" dialog to choose location and name of the transform. That's it.

To test your transform, see section Test Transform below.

Define Features to install

For this step you can either start with SwyxItBaseTransform.mst or your own transformation created in the previous step. Open the original SwyxIt!SetupEnglish.msi with orca, then select Apply Transform from the Transform menu and select the transformation to open.

Now select table Feature in the left pane. The table should look like this:

The features listed in the row are the options you can choose from in SwyxIt! setup when you select a custom installation. You have to modify the values in column Level. Windows Installer installs all features which have a level value which is less than or equal than the INSTALLLEVEL property. Initially SwyxIt! Setup uses and INSTALLLEVEL of 1 so that all features which have a level of 1 are installed. If you select installation type "Typical" when installing INSTALLLEVEL becomes 3. If you choose "Complete" it will be set to 1000.

If you set a feature's level to 0 (zero) it will not be displayed in the setup and not be installed. If you set a value higher than INSTALLLEVEL, e.g. 100 as shown in the picture above, a feature is deselected and will not be installed. When you run the setup with the normal user interface such features are shown with a red X, e.g.

There's a catch, however. SwyxIt! setup changes some feature levels depending on the installed software. If it detects Microsoft Outlook, it set level of feature ODialer to 1, regardless what you defined in your transformation. The same is true for feature NotesAccess. To define if these two feature should be installed or not you have to modify the Condition table

If you want to enforce installation of the Outlook Addin, set the Condition in row ODialer to 1. If you want to prevent the Outlook Addin from being installed, set the Condition in Row ODialer to 1 and the Level to 0.

When you're done select Generate Transform from the Transform menu and save your transformation. Now you're ready to test it. However, there are a few additional options you can define in your transformation.

Additional options

If you run SwyxIt! Setup there are two additional options you can check:

• Enable CTI mode
• Start SwyxIt after setup is finished

To set these options via a transformation, open the original SwyxIt!SetupEnglishUK.msi, apply your transform from the last step or use SwyxItBaseTransform.mst.

Enable CTI mode

Select the CustomAction table. Find row CA_Set_REGCTISETTING. To switch on CTI mode during setup, set the target column of that row to "#1" (without the quotes). :

Start SwyxIt! after setup is finished

Select the Property table. Find row STARTAPPINSTALL and set the value to 0 or 1. If 1, SwyxIt! will be started automatically after the setup.

As in the previous steps, select Generate Transform from the Transform menu to save your transform

Test Transform

Open a command prompt window and navigate to the folder where SwyxIt! setup and your transformation are stored. Enter:

SwyxIt! setup starts with the usual installation wizard. Proceed through the wizard, select setup type Custom. On the next setup page you see which features will be installed and the installation folder as set by your transformation. If you proceed, you can check if the CTI mode and "Start SwyxIt after setup" options are set as you defined them in your transform.

If your users have administrative rights on their PCs (which is a very bad thing to do, btw) you can use the above command line to deploy SwyxIt via a login script. If you additional specify /qb your users just see the Windows Installer progress dialog instead of the setup wizard. When using an Active Directory Group Policy object, deployment will work without the users needing administrative rights.

Your transform is now ready to be used. But please test the exact deployment in a separate testing environment before you use it.

And last but not least: Please be careful. A Windows Installer transform has almost no limits and can change every aspect of the original installation package. You can easily render it unusable or break the system where you install it.