Automation Workflow

[ctearney]

Regarding the Software Services that are imported into the Service Catalog from Empirum via the connector, is there a way to disable the automatic deployment of the service/package once it is assigned to a client? We are in the process of setting up our Service Catalog and building our Empirum Packages and are not yet ready to automate software deployments thru Workspace Management.

For now we just want to be able to assign a Software Service to a client and have no deployments generated from it as our clients already have the software we are assigning installed. I can only assume that there is a "switch" we can use to disable this function without breaking the import of data from Empirum.

**Edit - Wanted to add that we will be assigning these new services to clients in mass while we configure and build the system. So when we assign Office 365 Pro to 500+ clients we wont have 500+ clients getting a prompt to install the software they already have

[ctearney]

I did a little reading and I think I understand how the auto install/uninstall is occurring:

The Automation Workflow setting under "Provisioning" section of the Service controls the behavior of the service as it relates to provisioning. When the Service is created automatically by an imported Empirum Package(done via Empirum Connector) the new service automatically sets the "Automation Workflow" setting to "Provisioning - Install Software w. Empirum". Unfortunately this field is greyed out and unchangeable.

Please correct me if my understanding is wrong here.

[Hendrik_Ambrosius]

Would it help to not display the service in the portal by removing the assignment of the service to the catalog so the end user cannot order the service? In general the software should NOT reinstall even if the service is ordered after the software has already been deployed with Empirum because the product key is already on the target machine.

[ctearney]

Let me see if I can explain the scenario

- We have just implemented Empirum and Service Store into the Environment.
- 99% of all client systems have had all of their software installed manually outside of Empirum.
- The clients, at this time, do not use Service Store/ Self Service Portal.
- The Asset Management team used to use Excel spreadsheets to track who had what software licenses assigned to them
- The Asset management team wants to begin importing all the license assignments to the appropriate client in Service Store but we don't want to import these assignments if it will trigger an Empirum install.

So yes, hiding the service in the catalog would prevent clients from ordering services thus keep them from getting installed but that doesn't help when the administrator goes into the admin console and assigns a service to client. At some point we will want to use the Self Service Portal and have software automatically installed but right now we do not and I cant seem to find the setting or option to turn this workflow off.

I have found something regarding demand detection but I cant change it either. It seems that the automated import locks down a lot of normally configurable settings.

[Hendrik_Ambrosius]

Two thoughts:

There is no need to import the license assignments because the system automatically creates license demands after detecting installations that are subject to licensing. Even if software has been installed manually. What needs to be imported is the license inventory (the licenses you purchased). They will be automtically assigned to the license demands raised by the system. None of those changes trigger a software install!

If you are afraid of software being reinstalled unintentionally add these lines to the setup.inf of affected packages at the beginning of the [product] section:

; Sample for Adobe
If DoesRegKeyExist ("HKLM,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{AC76BA86-7AD7-1031-7B44-A90000000001},DisplayName") == "1" & DoesRegKeyExist ("HKLM,SOFTWARE\Adobe\Reader\9.0\Setup,Date") == "0" Then "Skip-Inst" EndIf
; Sample for Firefox
If DoesRegKeyExist ("HKLM,SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Mozilla Firefox (3.0.4),DisplayName") == "1" & DoesRegKeyExist ("HKLM,SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\3.0.4\Setup,Date") == "0" Then "Skip-Inst" EndIf

...and add this section at the very end of your script:

[Skip-Inst]
ErrorLogMsg Manual install found, skipping setup!
Exit

Of course you just keep one of the sample lines and modify it for each package.

The first section of the IF statement is anything that is already on the client of the manual setup (e.g. a regkey or file - file checking would be DOESFILEEXIST) to identify the software has already been installed manually.

The second section is the Empirum package´s product key. See the Developername and Productname variables in the setup.inf. If this key is present the software has been installed through a setup.inf.

Whats happens after the change?

If software is already installed manually and the Empirum setup starts for the first time it will skip the setup, finish the script (status goes to green) and there will be an entry in the SetupErrorLog to notify the admin that the setup has actually been skipped.

If you reinstall a softwarepackage on that client (e.g. because the installation is broken) it will always run the setup in reinstall mode because now there is an Empirum package product key (second part of the IF query above).

If it´s a client with no manual installation it will always run the setup.

So even if somebody accidently orders a services that initiates a software installation the client setup will not be harmed!

[ctearney]

Two thoughts:

There is no need to import the license assignments because the system automatically creates license demands after detecting installations that are subject to licensing. Even if software has been installed manually. What needs to be imported is the license inventory (the licenses you purchased). They will be automtically assigned to the license demands raised by the system. None of those changes trigger a software install!

Thank you for the detailed reply. This makes sense. I am going to try running one of our imports and confirm the results . I like the idea of adding the checks to the setup.inf for each package, I am going to work on getting that added to our library.