Migration nightmare. Going from "License Key" activation to "User" activation
Hello all,
I work for a company that has a 10-channel corporate license and we are trying to figure out the least painful way to migrate from TeamViewer 14 to TeamViewer 15.
We have had TeamViewer in our company for years, and we’ve always automated the deployment by way of a corporate software install portal we have available for all our users.
With our previous versions of TeamViewer, a user could select to have the full TeamViewer client installed and our system would deploy TeamViewer silently in the background, along with the TeamViewer registry file containing our corporate license key so that the software was activated and ready to go for the user, with no user interaction required. Now, with TeamViewer 15, license verification is user based instead of key based, and I don’t know how to automate the client activation without getting the user involved.
I initially started to investigate using the Active Directory integration available from TeamViewer, thinking that it would be a no-brainer for me to create an Active Directory group for TeamViewer licenses and simply put all of my users into that specific AD group so that the TeamViewer AD Connector would sync my Active Directory user accounts with the users in the TeamViewer Management Console, allowing users to use their existing Active Directory email/password to login to the TeamViewer client, however we have over 1400 Active Directory users that need TeamViewer, and according to my conversation with TeamViewer telephone support, 200 is the maximum amount of users accounts that can be managed with a corporate license.
Telephone support suggested I create a “shared” email/password to give out to all users, allowing them to activate their TeamViewer clients, but this totally breaks the automated installation method we used in the past, and requires an additional step of us providing all of our users with a shared email/password in order to license/activate the client.
Also, from a security standpoint, creating a “shared” email/password account and distributing the same username/password to 1400 users is a major security risk. There is no way to secure this supposed “shared” TeamViewer account if I have a potential 1400 points of failure. All it will take is having one of my 1400 users accidentally leaking this “shared” email/password to the public somehow, and then our corporate license becomes compromised.
Does anyone have a suggestion of how I can automate this process once again? It seems that the engineers of this latest version have left me in a bind with no way to install and activate the latest version of their software without either getting all 1400 users involved, or having me or another member of our IT department MANUALLY assist with all 1400 installations. I would prefer to avoid having to purchase a 3rd party SSO solution to plug in the credentials. I could also try and write an sso script myself with AutoItScript or something like that, but that would be somewhat time consuming way to solve the problem. Please help. I'm open to suggestions. If someone knows of a solution to my problem it would be greatly appreciated.
To the TeamViewer programming/engineering team: First, I love your product. TeamViewer is a wonderful tool. My feature request on future versions would be to request a silent install switch in the future that allows for the user credentials and the “Keep me signed in” option to be provided during the MSI install process. That would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks,
T_Walker
