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Of course, life would not be complete if we didn’t have a client component to configure, and we do. In order for the client to receive any advertisements we’re targeting to it, we must configure the Advertised Programs Client Agent and have it installed on each client. As with other client agents, you can find this agent in the Client Agents folder under Site Settings in the SMS Administrator Console.
Recall that the Advertised Programs Client Agent component files will need to be installed on Legacy Clients. After you enable and configure the agent, the component will be installed on the Legacy Client at the client’s next update cycle (every 25 hours by default or at the next computer startup). However, on Advanced Clients, all client agents are installed with the Advanced Client software. So the agent components already exist on the client. After you enable and configure the agent, the Software Distribution Agent will be enabled on the Advanced Client at the client’s next policy refresh (once every hour or at the next computer startup).
To configure the Advertised Programs Client Agent, follow these steps:
Navigate to the Client Agents folder, select Advertised Programs Client Agent, right-click it, and choose Properties from the context menu to display the Advertised Programs Client Agent Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 12.52.
Figure
12.52: The Advertised Programs Client Agent Properties
dialog box.
In the General tab, select the Enable Software Distribution To Clients check box. Note that by default the client agent will check the CAP or management point for new advertisements every 60 minutes. You can substitute a value from 5 to 1440 minutes (24 hours).
| Caution |
Enter a value appropriate to the frequency at which you advertise programs and the urgency of those advertisements. In general, the default 60 minutes or longer should be appropriate. |
Enable the option Clients Cannot Change Agent Settings to ensure that the settings you configure for the client agent stay that way. Select this option if desired.
Advertised programs are listed on SMS clients in Add Or Remove Programs in Control Panel as well as in the Advertised Programs Wizard on Legacy Clients and Run Advertised Programs on Advanced Clients. When a new advertisement is available, the new program notification icon is displayed on the task bar.
Select the Advanced Client Setting option New Program Notification Icon Opens Add Or Remove Programs to have the notification icon open Add Or Remove Programs to display new advertisements. If you leave this option cleared, the notification icon will open Run Advertised Programs.
Select the Notification tab, shown in Figure 12.53. This tab provides several options for defining how the client is notified of an advertisement.
Figure
12.53: The Notification tab.
The options in the Notification tab are fairly self-explanatory. Select the options that fit your needs and then click OK to save the configuration and begin the site update process.
If you don’t select any options in this tab, the client agent will check for an advertisement but will never notify the user that an advertisement has been received. The user would have to periodically run the Advertised Programs Wizard (Legacy Clients) or Run Advertised Programs (Advanced Clients) from Control Panel to find and run advertisements. If the advertised program had a mandatory assignment, it would simply run, again without notification to the user. In general, it’s not a good idea to not notify the user when an advertisement has been received. Notifying the user can prevent unfortunate occurrences such as the user logging off or shutting down before the program finishes running.
When the client agent is installed or enabled at the client, two new icons will be added to the Control Panel on each client—Advertised Programs Wizard and Advertised Programs Monitor on Legacy Clients; Run Advertised Programs and Program Download Monitor on Advanced Clients.
Once an hour, by default, the client agent checks the CAP or management point for new advertisements targeting that client. Advertised programs always appear in both Add Or Remove Programs, as shown in Figure 12.54 (except for clients running Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0) and in Advertised Programs Wizard (Legacy Clients) or Run Advertised Programs (Advanced Client). After a program has been successfully installed through Add Or Remove Programs, it won’t reinstall if the user tries to run it again.
Let’s take a look at the other Control Panel programs installed on the Legacy Client and Advanced Client.
The Advertised Programs Wizard is installed on Legacy Clients and is used to display available advertisements, select advertisements to run, and execute advertisements. When accessed through the Control Panel, this wizard causes the Advertised Programs Client Agent to check the CAP for new advertisements. When an advertised program is available on the client, the New Advertised Programs icon appears on the taskbar (if you enabled this type of notification). You can also access the wizard through the New Advertised Programs icon.
To run the Advertised Programs Wizard, follow these steps:
Click the Advertised Programs Wizard icon in the Control Panel, or double-click the New Advertised Programs Are Available icon on the taskbar (if that option was enabled), or right-click the New Advertised Programs Are Available icon and choose Run Advertised Programs Wizard from the context menu. The Advertised Programs Wizard welcome page is displayed, as shown in Figure 12.55.
Click Next to display the Select Programs To Run page, shown in Figure 12.56. All available advertised programs are listed on this page. Select the program you want to run.
You can view the properties of each program by clicking Properties to display the Program Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 12.57. This window provides information such as whether the program is scheduled to run, whether it has an expiration date, whether user input is required, and the running time of the program. Click Close to return to the Select Programs To Run page.
The two buttons to the left of the Properties button switch between a simple list of programs and a list that displays the following properties in columnar fashion:
When the program is scheduled to run
When the program was last run
When the program was advertised
The alternative Select Programs To Run page is shown in Figure 12.58.
Click Next to display the Run Programs Now Or Later page, shown in Figure 12.59. You can either let the program run now (the default) or select the Schedule This Program To Run On option and then specify a date and time for the program to run.
Click Next to display the Completing The Advertised Programs Wizard page, shown in Figure 12.60. Review your selection and then click Finish.
Figure
12.60: The Completing The Advertised Programs Wizard
page.
The Advertised Programs Monitor is installed on the Legacy Client and provides audit information about programs that have run on the client. When you launch the Advertised Programs Monitor from the Control Panel (or from the taskbar), it displays advertised programs that have run, are running, or are scheduled to run, as shown in Figure 12.61.
Through the Advertised Programs Monitor, you can view the program’s properties and reschedule the program if you have permission to do so. You can also modify monitor settings such as the polling cycle for the agent to check the CAP for new advertisements—again, if you have permission to do so.
After a program is run, depending on whether you enabled SMS reporting either through the package details or through a script, the Advertised Programs Client Agent will write its success or failure status back to the CAP.
If a program is assigned to run as mandatory and notification to the client hasn’t been disabled, the user sees a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 12.62. As you can see, depending on the countdown that was configured for the client agent, the user can opt to run the package immediately or click OK and let the package execute when the countdown completes. The user can also view a list of all scheduled programs and the details for this program.
The Run Advertised Programs is installed on Advanced Clients and, like the Advertised Programs Wizard on Legacy Clients, is used to display available advertisements, select advertisements to run, and view the properties of advertisements. Unlike its Legacy Client counterparts, you can’t change the configuration of the client agent. When accessed through the Control Panel, Run Advertised Programs causes the Software Distribution Client Agent to check the management point for new advertisements. When an advertised program is available for the client, the New Advertised Programs Are Available icon appears on the taskbar (if you enabled this type of notification). You can also start Run Advertised Programs through the New Advertised Programs Are Available icon (unless you configured this option to always launch Add Or Remove Programs through the agent properties as discussed earlier.)
To start Run Advertised Programs, follow these steps:
Click the Run Advertised Programs icon in the Control Panel, or double-click the New Advertised Programs Are Available icon on the taskbar (if that option was enabled), or right-click the New Advertised Programs Are Available icon and choose Run Advertised Programs Wizard from the context menu. The Run Advertised Programs dialog box is displayed, as shown in Figure 12.63.
Select a program from the Program Name list and click Properties to display that program’s properties. Properties include any special categories the administrator assigned the program to, general comments in the General tab, and Advanced tab options, as shown in Figure 12.64.
Select a program from the Program Name list and click Run to execute the program. If the program requires the package to be downloaded first, the Program Download Required message box is displayed, as shown in Figure 12.65. Here you can view the package’s properties and choose to have the program run automatically when the download finishes. Click Download to begin the download or click Cancel to stop.
If you click Download in step 3, the Program Download Status dialog box appears, similar to that shown in Figure 12.66. Again, you can view the program’s properties, choose to have the program run automatically when the download finishes, cancel the download, or hide the dialog box.
Figure
12.66: The Program Download Status dialog box.
The Program Download Monitor is installed on Advanced Clients and provides audit information about programs that have run on the client. When you launch the Program Download Monitor from the Control Panel (or from the taskbar), it displays advertised programs that need to be downloaded or are downloading, as shown in Figure 12.67. You can use Program Download Monitor to show status of a download (as seen in Figure 12.66), to cancel downloads, and to specify that a program start automatically after the download completes by highlighting the program in the Program list and selecting the appropriate option from the Download menu.
When you configure the advertisement properties, you can specify whether the package should be downloaded to the Advanced Client before it’s run (as shown previously in Figure 12.51). If so, it’s stored in the Advanced Client download cache. It can happen that the cache becomes too full to accommodate the download of any additional packages. When a package is downloaded and placed into cache, the client agent locks it. The package is unlocked after 24 hours have passed since the program was run or 30 days have passed and the program hasn’t run. After the package is unlocked, it can’t be locked again unless it’s removed from cache and downloaded again.
When a package needs to be downloaded and the cache is too full, SMS checks the other cached packages to see whether it can delete any or all of the oldest packages to free up enough space to accommodate the new package. If it can, it does so and downloads the package. If it can’t, as might be the case if a package is locked, the package isn’t downloaded.
Users with administrative credentials on the client can manage this download cache. They can change the size of the cache and its location, as well as delete the contents of the cache. You can manage the Advanced Client download cache by following these steps:
Open the Systems Management icon in Control Panel and select the Advanced tab, shown in Figure 12.68. You manage the Advanced Client download cache settings in the Temporary Program Download Folder frame.
Enter the Amount of Disk Space To Use value or use the slide bar to set the amount.
Click Change Location to modify the disk location for the download cache folder.
Click Delete Files to delete the entire contents of the download cache.
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When you schedule an advertised program to run at a predefined time, the Advertised Programs Client Agent on the Legacy Client and the SMS Software Distribution Agent on the Advanced Client will check the assigned time against the system time as reported on the client. This can cause significant problems for you if the client’s system clock is off. For example, if the client’s system clock is set for a different time zone, the package might not run when you expect it to.
Another scenario involves trial software. Suppose a user obtains a trial software application that’s timed to run for a specific period—say, 120 days. The user likes the product but doesn’t want to actually buy it (a license no-no!) or hasn’t finished evaluating it. So the user simply sets the system clock back a month, or a year, or even two years. This can really muck up your package distribution.
To avoid this problem, be sure to build in some kind of time synchronization routine for your clients that periodically synchronizes their time with the site server or some other designated time server. This goes for site systems and the server running SQL Server as well. Windows 2000 and later domains make time-synchronization easy and mandatory.
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The advertisement and its associated files are generated in a process even more straightforward than the package distribution process, as illustrated in Figure 12.69. Just as with the package distribution process, when the advertisement is created and written to the SMS database, a SQL trigger causes the SMS SQL Monitor service to write a wake-up file (.OFN) to Offer Manager’s inbox (\SMS\Inboxes\Offermgr.box).
The Offer Manager component generates instruction files for the Advertised Programs Client Agent on the target client computers and writes these to the \SMS\Inboxes\Offerinf.box directory on the site server. These instruction files consist of an offer file (with a name similar to that of the package but with an .OFR extension), which is the actual advertisement; an installation file (.INS) that references the advertisement ID and the collection ID it’s targeting; and up to three lookup files (.LKP), depending on the collection membership. These lookup files act as filters to determine whether the client (sitecodesystm.lkp), the user (sitecodeusr.lkp), or the user group (sitecodeusrgrp.lkp) should receive the advertisement. At this time, Offer Manager also evaluates the collection membership to determine which lookup files to create. Once again, ever-faithful Inbox Manager copies these instruction files to the Offerinf.box folder on the CAPs. For Advanced Clients, the SMS Policy Provider copies the advertisement information to the management point as an Advanced Client policy.
On the Legacy Client, when the Advertised Programs Client Agent runs, it uses the file Launch32.exe to begin the process, as shown in Figure 12.70. Launch32.exe itself starts ODPsys32.exe and ODPusr32.exe, two other threads called Offer Data Providers (ODPs). These threads read the lookup files that were created by Offer Manager and copied to the Offerinf.box on the CAP by Inbox Manager. These files specify whether the client computer, user, or user group should receive the advertisement.
If the client, user, and user group should receive the advertisement, the Advertised Programs Client Agent reads the instruction and offer file for the advertisement to collect more detailed information. It checks parameters such as the operating system platform on the client and the system time to determine whether to receive the offer. If all is fine, the client agent receives the offer, passes it to the Advertised Programs Manager, generates a status message to that effect, and writes the status message back to the CAP.
The Advertised Programs Manager then reads the .PKG, .ICO, and .NAL files for the package in question from the Pkginfo.box folder on the CAP. Based on the information stored there, the client agent connects to an appropriate distribution point and executes the program. When the program is completed— successfully or unsuccessfully—the client agent again generates a program status message that it writes to the CAP. You can view this status message using the Status Message Viewer in your SMS Administrator Console.
On the Advanced Client, the SMS Agent Host (CCMexec.exe) is responsible for retrieving Advanced Client policy updates from the management point and providing the SMS Software Distribution Agent with advertised program and package information. It’s also responsible for forwarding status information back to the management point.
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