This guide describes how to deploy Engage for unattended silent installs particularly when deploying to a large number of users on a domain network.

TL;DR

EngageLicensePerMachine-YourCompany-20170521.exe
EngageSetupPerMachine.exe /qn

EngageLicensePerMachine.exe /qn PRODUCTKEY="ABC12-ABC12-ABC12-ABC12-ABC12"

Download documentation

You can download PDF versions of this documentation from the following links.

• Engage Configuration (pdf)
• Engage Technical Specifications (pdf)

Workstation requirements

• Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile
• Microsoft Office 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 or Microsoft 365 Desktop version with at least the following components:
  • Excel
  • PowerPoint

Engage requires about 50 MB of disk space.

Installation

Engage is installed as a PowerPoint add-in. We offer two install types, a per-user and per-machine.

The per-user version is installed to %APPDATA%\Markido\Engage\ which is typically mapped to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Markido\Engage\ on most Windows installs and is only available to the logged in user.

The per-machine version requires administrator privileges and is installed to %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Markido\Engage\ which is typically mapped to C:\Program Files (x86)\Markido\Engage\ on most Windows install and is available to all users on the machine.

You can pass command line parameters to the Engage setup executable. These parameters are helpful for unattended silent installs particularly when deploying to a larger number of users on a domain network.

EngageSetup.exe /qf      // Default. Full UI during install.
EngageSetup.exe /qr      // Reduced UI with no wizard.
EngageSetupe.exe /qb     // Single dialog with progress bar.
EngageSetup.exe /qn      // Silent install with no UI.

The same command line options are available on our per-machine installs as well.

EngageSetupPerMachine.exe /qn

Activation

Before Engage can be used it must be activated using a purchased product key. The product can be activated in the following ways.

Pre-Activated – Deployed license key

This is the best option for silent installs being deployed enterprise wide. Along with the normal Engage installer Markido will build and provide a packaged license installer. The license installer will install a pre-activated license, configuration file and any prepared customizations. We include the company name and the expiry date of the license in the packaged filename. A sample install would use the following 2 commands:

EngageLicense-YourCompany-20150521.exe
EngageSetup.exe /qn

Or on a per-machine basis:

EngageLicensePerMachine-YourCompany-20150521.exe
EngageSetupPerMachine.exe /qn

This is the only activation method that doesn’t require internet access.

Automatic - Command line

The option automates the activation process via the command line. This is helpful for unattended silent installs when each computer has internet access. When the installation is ran you can specify the purchased product key on the command line. The product key is then stored in a file in %APPDATA%\Markido.Engage\ which is typically mapped to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Markido.Engage\ on most Windows installs. Each time Engage starts up, it checks for this product key file. If it exists and contains a valid product key Engage will try to automatically activate using the contained product key. If the activation is successful then the file is deleted. This automated activation will take place even if Engage has already been successfully activated. A sample silent install with product key command line would look like this:

EngageSetup.exe /qn PRODUCTKEY="ABC12-ABC12-ABC12-ABC12-ABC12"

NOTE: internet access to https://markido.com is required for the activation to occur.

Manual - In app

When Engage is ran without an activated license it displays an activation dialog for the user to enter their purchased product key. This is a simple process of entering their Work Email and Product Key and clicking the Activate button. This will contact https://markido.com and activate the copy of Engage and then close the dialog. This can either be done by distributing the product key to employees for them to install and activate the software or by IT individuals that perform the installation and manual activation process for each computer.

More on in app activation »

Manual - via Website

If Engage is blocked from accessing the internet, the user can click Manual Activation… from the activation dialog once the Work Email and Product Key have been entered. This will show a second dialog that will provide a local license key to copy and paste into a web form on https://markido.com/engage/activate, the link is also provided in the dialog. Once the browser is open the user pastes the copied local key and clicks Activate. This will provide an activated license for the user to copy and paste back into the manual activation dialog in Engage. This can be done on any web browser, it doesn’t necessarily need to be from the computer being installed on. Once the activated license is pasted into the textbox the user should then click Save license which will activate the copy of Engage and then close the dialogs.

More on manual activation »

Runtime Configuration

Engage runtime configuration can be configured via a json config file.

The user config file should be located at %APPDATA%\Markido.Engage\engage.cfg which is typically mapped to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Markido.Engage\engage.cfg on most Windows installs. A per-machine config file should be located at %CommonAppDataFolder%\Markido\Engage\engage.cfg which is typically mapped to C:\ProgramData\Markido\Engage\engage.cfg. A fully configured json file with default values would contain the following:

{"AutoUpdate": 1, "AnonUsageStats": 1, "AutoCustomization": 1, "LogLevel": "info", "ErrorHandling": 0}

When no configuration is found the recommended default configurations are used. The only configuration setting we would suggest changing is AutoUpdate if you want to have more control over deploying updates internally. In the per-machine build of Engage auto udates are disabled by default. When Markido builds a pre-activated license package we include a disabled AutoUpdate and AutoCustomization configuration by default.

Automatic Updates (Per-User installations only)

Engage is by default setup to automatically update when new versions are released. To support larger computer networks the automatic update feature can be turned off. This allows builds to be tested for compatibility with user computers before a new version is deployed.

Json Config:

{"AutoUpdate": 0} or to turn it on: {"AutoUpdate": 1}

When no value is specified the default value is 1, unless it’s a per-machine install in which case its disabled (0) by default.

Note: Our per-machine installations do not include an auto update feature as new versions must be deployed via the domain as an administrator.

Anonymous Usage Statistics

Engage collects anonymous usage statistics. The data is anonymous and only collected for use by Markido and will never be transmitted to any third party. The data only consists of Engage feature usage statistics (ex. an infographic was created, an icon was inserted) that helps focus future features and releases. The collected information does not contain any data or text from the presentation.

Json Config:

{"AnonUsageStats": 0} or to turn it on: {"AnonUsageStats": 1}

When no value is specified the default value is 1.

Customizations

Markido provides an optional customization service to bundle provided branded assets (presentations, slides, elements, color swatch and images) into Engage. Once the assets are created they are provided via a deployment process. Markido hosts the customized assets on https://markido.com and at start-up Engage checks via HTTPS to see if there are assets available.

Json Config:

{"AutoCustomization": 0} or to turn it on: {"AutoCustomization": 1}

When no value is specified the default value is 1.

Log Level

Engage logs certain events and errors. This is mostly for debugging purposes but can be helpful in some cases to clients. The following log levels are allowed "error", "info", "debug" and "trace". The closer to the trace level you get, the more verbose the logging is. The log is stored at %APPDATA%\Markido.Engage\MarkidoEngage.log which is typically mapped to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Markido.Engage\MarkidoEngage.log.

Json Config:

{"LogLevel": "info"} or to keep it really quite: {"LogLevel": "error"}

When no value is specified the default value is "info".

Error Handling

If an error does occur while using Engage, this configuration parameter tells Engage how to handle it. A value of 1 will not display anything for the user but will silently send an anonymous stack trace to Markido to help us determine the cause of the error so we can address the issue if required. A value of 0 indicates to prompt the user with a dialog indicating the error and providing a choice to "Send error report" or "Don't send" as shown in the EngageTechnicalSpecifications.pdf. Finally a -1 value indicates to swallow the error and don’t do anything, which is not recommended. With any of the configuration settings, the error will always get logged to the log file stored at %APPDATA%\Markido.Engage\MarkidoEngage.log which is typically mapped to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Markido.Engage\MarkidoEngage.log.

Json Config:

{"ErrorHandling": 0} // Prompt user
{"ErrorHandling": -1} // Swallow
{"ErrorHandling": 1} // Silent send to Markido, default

When no value is specified the default value is 1.

Uninstall

To allow you to easily script the uninstall of Engage (no one has ever asked about this yet ;-), we have included an uninstall link as part of the Engage installation.

Per-user:

start %APPDATA%\Markido\Engage\uninstall

This executes the uninstall link silently from the installation folder. It uses the environment variable APPDATA which points to the user’s app data folder where Engage gets installed.

Per-machine:

for %A in ("c:\Program Files (x86)\Markido\Engage\uninstall") do start %~sA

Engage also gets added to the Add\Remove Programs list in Windows so you can always use that to uninstall in a one off situation.