Distributing Chrome Extension in Organizations

Owned by Eamonn O'Kane (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 22, 2020 by Marc Amouyal
3 min read

In organizations, distribution and installation of Sealights Chrome Extension must be central as part of the user’s configuration, rather than relying on individual per-user installation. The process is made of 2 steps:

  1. Distribution and installation of the Chrome Extension from the store

  2. Configuration of the extension once it has been installed

Step 1 is platform dependent, as explained below. Step 2 should be platform agnostic as Chrome as a browser is essentially platform agnostic.

There are a number of user management platforms and they are using different terminologies.
This document will include description of the steps required on each platform that we have successfully distributed and deployed the extension.

Distribution and Installation

Windows Group Policy

This is a Windows based platform that requires the configuration of a dedicated policy and assigning this policy to all users who are using Sealights Chrome extension.

The image below shows what the dedicated group policy actually configures. The numbered red circles reflect the hierarchy of configuring a Chrome Extension, and the bottom of the image shows the configuration for Sealights extension. The entry is the concatenation of Sealights extension unique ID and an update lookup URL Google is providing, separated by a semicolon. This is standard configuration for any Chrome extension, differing only in its ID.

Sealights extension unique ID is ldcbjefiplkmggapdfbpeemhihkgdmik

The configuration full entry therefore is: ldcbjefiplkmggapdfbpeemhihkgdmik;https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx

This group policy guarantees that any user assigned it will have the extension installed and updated whenever the extension is updated in the store. The user cannot deactivate or remove it once installed, as the following image demonstrates:

As you can see, the extension deactivation toggle is disabled, and the Remove button is not available.

Token Automatic Configuration

Once the extension has been installed, it must be configured with a valid token to be able to carry out its functionality.

The extension, whether manually installed or distributed as described above, is bundled without a token. To configure the token the following command must be executed:

<path-to-chrome-executable> chrome-extension://ldcbjefiplkmggapdfbpeemhihkgdmik/templates/auto-config.html?token=<token>

  • <path-to-chrome-executable> On Windows machines it is usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Application\chrome.exe

  • <token> is the token unique to the customer

This command must be in the user’s login script. The first time it runs it will configure the extension with the passed token. On successive invocations it will simply know that the token exists and do nothing.

Windows Group Policy

On Windows platform this command should be saved in a script file (e.g. Powershell ps1 file) in a central location that can be executed by all the users working with Sealights extension. The group policy configuration looks like this:

Group policy configured to run the script file c:\Scripts\Sealights_Token.ps1 every time the users logs on.

Reference