Adobe CC2019 Deployment

Time to start planning for CC2019. Things have changed a bit. Adobe has discontinued serialization packages in favor of user subscriptions and the Creative Cloud Packager app has been replaced with the online Admin Console.

We’ll start by uninstalling all previous versions of Adobe CC apps for the majority of the production clients. We’ll be able to use the CCP app one more time to build this.

Using Creative Cloud Packager to uninstall all previous versions of Photoshop and other apps.

Once we have all our options checked, CCP will provide us with an executable and accompanying xml config file.
AdobeCCUninstaller
AdobeCCUninstallerConfig.xml
Typical usage would be:

./AdobeCCUninstaller \ --uninstallConfigPath=./AdobeCCUninstallerConfig.xml

With that, we’ll also use our Adobe Serializer items to remove the workstation’s serial license. We’ll place all of these items together into a package and run them through a postinstall script.

Adobe-Serializer and AdobeCCUninstaller items for use in package.

Our postinstall script can look someting like this:

#!/bin/bash

# make a temp location for leftover app folders
temp_dir=/tmp/adobecc_uninstall_$(date '+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S')
mkdir $temp_dir

# remove device license
/tmp/Adobe-Serializer/RemoveVolumeSerial

# uninstall adobe cc apps prior to 2019
/tmp/AdobeCCUninstaller --uninstallConfigPath=/tmp/AdobeCCUninstallerConfig.xml

# move out leftover items
if [[ -d /Applications/Adobe\ Animate\ CC\ 2015 ]]; then
   mv -f /Applications/Adobe\ Animate\ CC\ 2015 $temp_dir/
fi

exit 0

Now that these are removed, we’ll build one more package before pushing out the new software. This one will restrict CC updates on the workstation. Dropping a file at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/AAMUpdaterInventory/1.0/ with the following lines will restrict client updates. All users should have read access to this file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
   <Preferences>
   <Suppressed>1</Suppressed>
   </Preferences>
Dropping the AdobeUpdaterAdminPrefs.dat file which includes the above lines.

Making sure that this item is in place will restrict any updates initiated within an app. Users will get the following dialog:

Lastly, we can build our software deployment package in the new Admin Console. This time, we’ll also opt to hide the Apps panel and restrict app installs/updates within the CC app.

We’ll create one package for each production app and start deploying.