If you are installing NightWatchman then there is a high likelihood that you are going to have to provide some configuration options such as license key, name of reporting server, hiding the system tray icon, etc.  All of which can be specified during the GUI install interface or automatically as a parameter when the install takes place.

When it comes to doing mass deployments of the NightWatchman client there are a number of ways to do it:

• Manually install - Fine for a few clients but someone will be very busy and very bored if doing anymore than that
• Deployment tool - Something like SMS/SCCM or other deployment mechanism such as ZenWorks where a command line can be used to specify the options being passed to the MSI
• Group Policy Install - MSI is added to the policy and a default install would occur unless it is configured using a transform file (.MST)

Now a transform file can actually be used for all the methods listed above, and is actually quite a neat way of doing it, but it is only the GPO method where it is the only option for providing configuration parameters.  Therefore a method is needed to create this transform file and probably the easiest way of doing this, certainly without purchasing extra software, is to use the free Microsoft tool called Orca (orca.Msi (1.82 mb)).

The steps below list the process for creating a transform (.MST) file through Orca:

1. Once you have installed Orca the first thing you need to do is open the original NightWatchman MSI (the version that will be used during the install)
2. Next you have to tell it you are going to create a transform file which can be done by selecting "Transform" from the menu bar followed by "New Transform"
3. All the options that are required are now configured through the "Property" table, so if you select this on the left hand side you will be presented with all the options that are applicable to a default install of the product
4. So we want to create some new properties with our specific configuration options and this can be done by right-clicking on the right hand side and selecting "Add row"
5. You will then be presented with a dialog box where you specify the Property and the value that it should have:
6. 
7. Use this method for entering all the install parameters you require, typically these would be PIDKEY, REPORTINGSERVER, REPORTING, SYSTEMTRAY.
8. Once you have entered everything you will have a table similar to the one shown below:
9. 
10. It's not just a case of generating the transform, again from the "Transform" menu item, and you now have a .MST file that can be used during install.

So now you have your transform how exactly is it used?

If you are using Group Policy then during the process of adding the MSI into the GPO there is also a tab where you can specify the transform which will then be used when you target the MSI to a machine.

If you just want to use the transform on the command line, either for a batch script or for a package in SMS/SCCM then the following command line can be used, which will do the fully configured install in quiet mode:

• msiexec /i "C:\install folder\package.msi" TRANSFORMS="C:\install folder\transform.mst" /qb

Happy Installing!

Read the complete post at http://www.1e.com/techblog/post/2009/08/05/Transforming-NightWatchman.aspx