Recent IT Pro questions about Office Telemetry

This post describes recent IT Pro questions about Office Telemetry, such as how the agents are licensed, installing agents on Windows XP and Windows Vista, and more.

It’s been rewarding to see an increase in Office Telemetry questions come in through forums and internal discussion groups. More and more customers are discovering Office Telemetry and are asking some really good questions. Here are a few that I’ve seen recently—along with their answers.

Q: Do I need Office 2013 licenses for every down-level Office client that runs Telemetry Agent?

A: No, you just need a single Office 2013 VL license. This license gives you the components you need for Office Telemetry (Telemetry Dashboard, Telemetry Agent, and Telemetry Processor) and permission to install Telemetry Agents on all of your Office 2010, Office 2007, and Office 2003 clients.

Q: The agent won't install on Windows XP SP1. Why isn’t it working?

A: We tested the agents on Windows service packs that are currently supported by Microsoft. Several operating systems, such as Windows XP and Windows Vista, have older service packs that are no longer supported and might not work correctly with the agent. For example, the agent won’t install on Windows XP SP1 or Windows Vista SP1. You must use Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP2 to install the agent.

To verify that your Windows clients are running a supported service packs, use the Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search website. Here are the lists for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Q: I installed the agent on Windows XP SP3, but the agent isn’t uploading data. Is it broken?

A: No, it’s not broken. In Windows XP, the agent only uploads data at log on. You or your users need to log off, and then log on, to trigger the upload.

Q: I used to use OMPM to scan all my organization’s files, but now Office Telemetry only scans files in the Most Recently Used (MRU) list of clients. How can I get more files into the MRU list for scanning?

A: The best answer is to just wait for your users to use those files. That’s the way Office Telemetry was designed. We believe that scanning only the files that are in use will help speed up your Office deployments. We talk more about this in the Office compatibility guide.

Q: Why doesn’t Office Telemetry track issues like linked documents, charts, and embedded documents the way OMPM did?

A: Office Telemetry was built from scratch, so the OMPM feature set wasn’t used as a starting point. When evaluating features for Office Telemetry, we found that tracking these types of issues adds complexity and often leads to false positives, so this capability wasn’t included.

Q: I used to use OMPM to scan Access databases for compatibility. Why won’t Office Telemetry tell me whether Access databases are compatible with Office 2013 like OMPM did?

A: In Office 2013, we only support compatibility event tracking for Word 2013, Excel 2013, and Outlook 2013. If an Access database is in use on a monitored Office client, the agent can detect that database and report it in the inventory list, but the agent can’t detect whether the database has compatibility issues. You or your users will need to test the databases to identify issues.

Q: Does Office Telemetry collect information about virtualized plug-ins?

A: The App-V registries are virtualized and separate, so the agent can't detect the add-ins unless they are part of the App-V sequenced package.

Thanks for reading. Want to learn more about Office Telemetry? Start with the Compatibility content roadmap.

Jill