Pinning Programs to the Taskbar via unattend.xml

Question

Trying to pin the following programs to the taskbar buy adding them in the "amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup__neutral"of the specialize pass of unattend.xml file used by SCCM\OSD in the "Apply Operating System' step.
-<TaskbarLinks>
<Link0>%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office\Microsoft Word 2010.lnk</Link0> <Link1>%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office\Microsoft Excel 2010.lnk</Link1> <Link2>%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start
Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office\Microsoft Outlook 2010.lnk</Link2>
</TaskbarLinks>
I edited the unattend file using WSIM tool and every other setting I applied  using the file has worked but these just dont show up on the taskbar.
Weird thing is if i manually pin say Word for example  to the taskbar after the OSD deployment is complete and hover the mouse over it it will display as Microsoft Word 2010 (2) as if it is the 2nd time the program has been pinned to the taskbar even
though you can only see one of them. same for Excel and Outlook but if I add say Access it will not have the (2) after it
So it's like the settings from the unttend file are working somewhat as Win7 thinks there is already a shortcut there but they are just not displaying...
I've seen others saying this can only be done when syspreping and call the unattend at that time but if that is true why is it in the "amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup__neutral" Components of WSIM?

Answer 1

I presume you are not also configuring any of the same links in the StartPanelLinks? (I have heard that it sometimes causing conflicts).
I agree the Deployment guys stuff is heavily MDT-centric but in this instance all that is required to use their script is to copy the ZTIUtility.vbs
(from the scripts folder in toolkit package) and no environment changes. However you don't even need to do this as you could simply adapt their code snippet and put into a vbs file (A bare bones example of this is shown below but with no error checking or
logging, which is built into the Deployment Guys sample script).You could configure this to be run once by each user when they first logon (e.g. via ActiveSetup or RunOnce registry key) .
Const CSIDL_COMMON_PROGRAMS = &H17
Const CSIDL_PROGRAMS = &H2
Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set objAllUsersProgramsFolder = objShell.NameSpace(CSIDL_COMMON_PROGRAMS)
strAllUsersProgramsPath = objAllUsersProgramsFolder.Self.Path
Set objFolder = objShell.Namespace(strAllUsersProgramsPath & "\Microsoft Office")
Dim arrShortcuts
arrShortcuts = Array("Microsoft Office Word 2010.lnk", _
"Microsoft Office Excel 2010.lnk", _
"Microsoft Office Outlook 2010.lnk")
Dim i, objShortcut
i = 0
For Each objShortcut In arrShortcuts
Set objFolderItem = objFolder.ParseName(arrShortcuts(i))
PinToTaskBar(objFolderItem)
i = i+1
Next
Sub PinToTaskBar(FolderItem)
For each verb in FolderItem.Verbs()
If verb.Name = "Pin to Tas&kbar" then
verb.DoIt()
End If
Next
End Sub
Thanks you very much I will give this a shot.
But no i was not trying to add anything to the StartPanelLinks, just want to add 3 items to taskbar (which I understand 3 is the limit). Frustrating that you have to resort to scripts when the setting to do it appears to be
there for you to use in the WSIM setting  but it just doesn't work