Application installation

[Chatham]

Hi guys,

So i have been thinking about how the way you can install custom applications automatically with the image.

The way I am doing it now is:
- Enable autologon during the POSTIMAGE phase

- When PC builds up, administrator is automatically logged on

- I have a bunch of applications set to install during the FIRSTLOGON stage

The way I am doing it this way is because we have 3 Desktop teams, each with its own set of apps and custom configurations to apply upon build. Basically I map the network drive during FIRSTLOGON stage as a task and then next tasks simply use the path to run msiexec with /qn or simply silently installing all other software and powershell scripts.

The problem is - this requires a custom XML file to have all the lines for tasks etc. Once something changes on the network drive or I need to add or remove an applications - I have to completely rebuild the boot image. As for our office in US it's cool cause we use PXE boot so I can just use WDS and replace the image. But for the offices in Europe where we don't have PXE, that would mean every small change would require building a new USB Stick or burning a new DVD/CD with bootable image.

Question - would it be possible to boot winPE and THEN be able to select a custom SmartDeploy.xml file as an answer file? The current Deployment Wizard only allows to export the file, not ti actually IMPORT an existing one. The way I see it - create an additional window in the deployment wizard so you can browse the network for a correct answer file. This would give flexibility to changes made to them and enable me to save the planet and DVDs

Hope you could take this under consideration!

Jakub

[Guest Sid]

Hi,

Thank you for the recommendation. Our team is constantly looking for ways to improve the product and we take each customer feedback very seriously. So our team will look into this suggestion. Thank you again we value your opinions.

Sid

[Chatham]

No problem. I believe that would be a great benefit, cause I really can't imagine an enterprise where you dispatch let's say 10 engineers with a bootable DVD each to install system on several computers and then realize you need to make a change in the answer file and therefore rebuild ALL the DVDs :/ Of course this would not be the case if everyone had PXE boot, but since there are companies that don't, this would be a huge help.

[arrow]

Amen, I've been looking for this feature also.

[Chatham]

Is there any plan to include the mentioned above feature? It would extremely decrease the number of boot images for our organization, as we target a few builds for teams/machines types just by a few changes to the post-deployment tasks specified in the XML answer file.