Installer

An installer encapsulates the information for an install necessary for Deployment. You edit installers on the Installer Page and can deploy them from there.

The primary information in an installer is its file. All installers include one or more files with one of them being the primary file. PDQ Deploy installers need, at a minimum, the primary installer file. To include additional files there is the option to include all files (and sub-directories) in the same location as the primary installer file. If you use this option ensure that there are no extraneous files in the directory, since copying them will slow things down.

File Type	File Extension	Description
Microsoft Installer	.msi	These are very common installer files that are installed using msiexec.exe which is part of all recent versions of Windows. See below for options that can be set when using this file type.
Executable	.exe	Many installers nowadays come packaged as executable files. When using an executable file it is critical that you select the correct Silent Options or the installation may appear to hang forever. Quite often executable installers are little more than wrappers around an .msi file and will accept many of the same command-line options that msiexec.exe does.
PowerShell Script	.ps1	PowerShell is Microsoft's new standard for scripting administrative tasks.
VB Script	.vbs	VB Script is used quite extensively in systems administration to perform routine tasks.
Microsoft Installer Patch	.msp	These files are patches or updates for existing applications (or the operating system.) They are essentially .msi files that don't have the uninstall or repair option, they can only be installed. They are installed with msiexec.exe just like .msi files.
Microsoft Update Package	.msu	Like .msp files, these are updates. They only work with Windows Vista and later and are installed with wusa.exe.
Batch Files	.cmd or .bat	These are the same batch files that you've probably used for myriad tasks. Generally installers don't come packaged this way, but you would create your own. One use would be if you have an installer that needs some environment set up before it is run. You could set up the environment in the batch file and then execute the installer (you would need to Include entire directory if you do this so that both the batch file and the installer are copied.) You could also perform non-installation type tasks, such as editing the computer's registry or creating or deleting files. Pretty much anything you can automate in a batch file can be "deployed" this way.
Regedit	.reg	Quickly add values to a computer's registry using a .reg file exported using regedit.exe.

When installing with Microsoft Installer you have some options which can be set on the Installer Page/

Operation can be one of install, repair, or uninstall. Most often you will be using install, but the other options are there for your use.

Some installers will want to restart after complete (such as to replace files in use) and this option affects how those requests are handled. The choices are never, prompt (asks the user if they want to restart), force (always restart, even if not requested), and not set (restart if request, otherwise do nothing.) You can use the not set option if you want to set the restart manually, some installers have their own special options and you don't want them to conflict with the MSI option.

It's rare that you won't want to use this option (see Silent Options) but there are some situations where you don't want to use the standard quiet option. Some installers don't work well with the quiet option, though they are rare. An example is an installer that needs the /passive option instead of /quiet.

Executable and batch installers typically report success with a return code of 0 (zero) but some also return success with other return codes. Usually these are warnings or other informational return codes that you can safely ignore. When creating an installer you can provide a comma-separated list of return codes that will be considered a success. Any installer that doesn't return one of those codes will be flagged as an error and the return code will be shown to you.