Tag Archives: application

In my previous post I explained how to Create shortcuts to deploy available applications in ConfigMgr 2012.
User-available deployed apps are not shown in the SCCM 2012 Software Center right away as designed. (Sidenote: I believe ‘The new SCCM’ vNext (a.k.a. Current Branch) has a different approach already!)

Using ApplicationViewService.asmx on the Application Catalog we can do some extra’s: automated application requests!
This way the user does not have to go to the App-Catalog and request the app. Besides that, only not-installed apps will appear in the ‘Available Software’ tab in Software Center. Which is nice right?
Before we can use this we have to make changes to the Application Catalog web.config file.

The file can be found on the server running the appcatalog at
<drive>\:Program Files\SMS_CCM\CMApplicationCatalog\Web.config
save a copy if you want to be able to revert to original without thinking.

For a customer implementing Configuration Manager 2012 the use of the Application Catalog and Software Center can be a big change for the end-users. This when they have not used SCCM software and/or user-portal centric delivery before.
I was looking for possibilities to create a situation to start an application deployment with a more common interface like the start menu or the desktop.
Since the startmenu is back in modern OS-versions to deliver the apps for the user I decided to try and use it for this.

To automate it I have created a simple script that will create shortcuts you can use to start the deployment. On the background it uses Configuration Manager Client SDK WMI Classes
It’s not being used in production, so it is not completely functional with user rights but it was much easier to create than I expected. So use this at you own risk and make it better yourself :).

The code should explain itself because it’s not that difficult. You can play with the Get-WmiObject and the Where-Object options to test your exact results.

This creates (for example) a shortcut to install Mozilla Firefox with the target:

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -WindowStyle Hidden -File C:\Deploy-CCM_App.ps1 -ApplicationName "Mozilla Firefox (nl)"

Adobe Reader is a very common application and you can find very good documentation on it.
In this post I will do my way of scripting and customizing the Adobe Reader XI installation for deployment. It’s not that hard to do but documenting helps me to remember all the steps together for maybe the next version and next time.

You need a few directories to work with the steps:

The Source folder will have the full version of the Adobe Reader XI installation to begin with. In this case the file is AdbeRdr11010_en_US.exe (latest english).