Deployment Overview

Each research service available on a client computer is defined by a group of registry settings. Therefore, installing or deploying a research service involves adding those registry settings to the client computer. There are several ways to accomplish this:

• Installation by the user. For more information, see Adding Services through the Office User Interface.
  • Manual installation by typing in the URL.
• Deployment by an administrator. For more information, see Deploying Services to Office Users.
  • Deployment using a .reg file that installs the registry settings.
  • Deployment using a script or setup program that installs the registry settings.
  • Deployment using a disk image that includes the registry settings.
  • Deployment using the Microsoft® Office 2003 Resource Kit tools to install the registry settings.
  • Deployment using a discovery server to install services or to advertise their availability. For more information, see Configuring Service Discovery.

Deployment methods that take advantage of the research service's own Registration method offer a greater assurance of valid and properly-formatted settings. Manual installation by typing the URL and deployment by using a discovery server take advantage of the Registration interface of the research service. All the other methods described in the preceding list create the service's registry settings without using the service itself.

Third-party service providers may want to advertise the availability of their services on the Web in the Office Marketplace. For more information, see Marketing a Service on Office Marketplace.

For detailed information about the registry settings used by research services, see Registry Settings Overview.

Important  Although we talk about registering a research service, the normal registration process registers a research service provider, along with the research service or services that the provider chooses to register on the user's computer. While the provider (through logic in the Registration method) can programmatically select which services to install, the user does not have an equivalent option in the Research task pane user interface to select or exclude individual services at the time of registration. In some cases, the provider may choose to install services, but not to activate them, by setting their Display setting to "Off." The user can activate or deactivate services at any time, from the Research Options dialog box.