Quickly set up Office Telemetry Dashboard on a workgroup or domain-joined computer

This blog post was written by Junko Kyomasu, a Program Manager in the Office Solutions Management team 

Office Telemetry Dashboard is a new, powerful tool to manage Office documents and add-ins in your organization. It enables a better upgrade experience from your existing Office to Office 2013. We’re happy to hear that many of you have tried the telemetry features with Office 2013, but some of you have told us that you want to test the dashboard components in a workgroup environment, which until now hasn't been supported. Configuring the registry to enable immediate data reporting can also be tricky.

To make your evaluation effort much easier and faster, we have published a Windows PowerShell script, Deploy-TelemetryDashboard.ps1, that will set up all telemetry components at once! You can run the script to install the components on a single workgroup computer or domain-joined computer. The script also enables the built-in telemetry agent to begin reporting telemetry data immediately. This script is the only way you can configure the dashboard components in a workgroup.

For production environments that contain hundreds or thousands of client computers, you can deploy each component step-by-step as described in Deploy Office Telemetry Dashboard.

How to run Deploy-TelemetryDashboard.ps1

Download Deploy-TelemetryDashboard.ps1 and TDDB.bak from the TechNet Gallery and run Deploy-TelemetyDashboard.ps1 on your Office 2013 installed computer.

That’s it!

The script will let you configure Telemetry Dashboard on your computer and you will see telemetry data reported back to the dashboard immediately.

What will be done by Deploy-TelemetryDashboard.ps1

The script will set up all required components needed to start using Telemetry Dashboard. You must run the script on a computer that has Office Professional Plus 2013 or Office 365 ProPlus editions of Office 2013 installed.

The script will perform the following tasks: 

1. Create 2 local groups (workgroup only): To allow secure access to the shared folder and database, the script will create 2 local groups on a computer and add the current logged-in user to the groups. The groups are:

TDAgent – local group that will have access to the shared folder

TDDatabase – local group that will have access to the database

2. Create a new shared folder: The location where Office client computers upload telemetry data.

TDShared: local folder that will be created under system drive (e.g., C:\TDShared)

3. Install Office Telemetry Processor service: The service will process data that is uploaded from the client computer and insert it into the database.

*4. Restore Telemetry database (workgroup only): The script will restore an empty database.
*Note: For a domain joined computer, the script will launch the Office Telemetry Processor settings wizard instead of restoring an empty database. You can create a new database by following the settings wizard.

5. Configure Telemetry Agent: Telemetry Agent is built-into Office Professional Plus 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus editions of Office 2013. The script will write registry values that enable the agent to collect and upload data. Please refer to Office Telemetry Agent for more details of each registry values.

6. Run the agent task: Telemetry Agent will be triggered by the scheduled task. The script will run the agent task (Microsoft\Office\OfficeTelemetryAgentLogOn) manually so that the agent collects and uploads telemetry data to the shared folder.

7. Launch Telemetry Dashboard: After all settings have been deployed successfully and the agent has uploaded telemetry data, the script will launch Telemetry Dashboard.

8. Export agent registry values: You can export registry settings for the agent to send out the same settings to other Office client computers that have the Telemetry Agent.

We hope this Windows PowerShell script helps you smoothly set up Office Telemetry features so you can start obtaining the telemetry data that you need to fearlessly upgrade to Office 2013 and start taking advantage of its many great features.

We welcome your questions or comments on this script. If you have any, please add comments to this posting or to the Q&A tab in the TechNet Gallery.