Planning to deploy

Before you create packages, you need to do a good deal of thinking and planning. This article gives you all the information you need for that planning. There are several steps to your planning process:

• Identifying your user groups and their application needs.
• Identifying the packages you need to create to install those applications for those users, and deciding how you will deploy the packages.

The sections in this article address each one of these planning steps.

You will need one or more deployment packages for every unique user group in your enterprise. Your first planning step is to identify each user group that needs a particular application or set of applications to do their job. If you or someone else at your company has already purchased the Creative Cloud for teams subscription, this step has undoubtedly already been done, but it may or may not be written down in a form useful to you at this stage in planning. 

At this point, you want to identify the following:

• Group name: Identify each user group that will use the software subscription. The labels you choose to identify your user groups are for your own use only; they are not included anywhere in the deployment package, and so there are no restrictions on how you name them.
• Primary applications needed: For each user group, create a list of applications people in that group need to do their jobs. 
• Product: Identify the product(s) that provide the applications you have listed. This list should consist of point product and/or suite product names.
• Platform: Identify the platform for each product (Windows or Mac OS, or both).

Making your package list

After you have a complete list of user groups and the applications each one needs to do their jobs, you are ready to determine how many packages you need to deploy those applications for those users. To determine your package count and what each one should contain, you need to understand a few concepts about Adobe product and package design.

Calculate your package count

If you have chosen only one platform, your package count is 1. If you have chosen both platforms, your package count is 2. You can record these numbers in the package count column of the example planning sheet shown later in the article.

Name each package

You are now ready to name your packages. Choose a brief but descriptive name for each package on your list. If you have Mac OS and Windows versions of the same package, you may want to choose a common package name and append “Win” or “Mac” to the name. Whatever name you choose, it should allow you to easily identify that package with its intended user group and usage.

An example planning sheet

To list all the information at one place, you can create an example planning sheet as shown below.