Trying to ease job for helpdesk people (SMS2003)

[badkid]

I am currently trying to work out a nice way for Helpdesk people to add workstations to collections without providing a full SMS training course to educate them. Also provide a script to populate devices into collections. Please note that helpdesk people are generally high turn over, but comes with Microsoft AD skills etc...

I have looked at using AD security groups, Eg Create a group called Visio2002 security group and add machines into this only. But it doesn't work as well as direct membership in the collection. (At the moment I am not having any success using User Groups in the membership).I have enabled the approriate Discovery methods. Unless I have missed something....

Does anyone have or know of any nice tools or scripts that they can point me too? (SMS2003 environment)

 

[Mich]

A lot of that depends on your environment. I have a naming convention that allows me to build/modify collections using fairly simple SQL queries. Do you have a standard naming convention for your desktops and/or servers?

 

[badkid]

We do have a standard naming convention, does it really matter as long as the script contains the correct machine names? I'm interested how your SQL query works, please advise more...

 

[Mich]

Each of our machines have a building code followed by a department code, so I use a SQL Like statement to group them. For example,

select SMS_R_System.ResourceID,SMS_R_System.ResourceType,SMS_R_System.Name,SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SMS_R_System.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name like "%785%" order by SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name

This will group all PCs with department code 785. I've created collections of all PCs in particular buildings the exact same way.

You're right when you say it doesn't matter as long as the exact PC names are in the script, but that doesn't allow for much flexibility.

 

[badkid]

We have our collection is nutted out, back to my question, I should of been abit more clear. Instead of using the SMS MMC console and adding workstations to a "direct" membership, has anyone developed a script or GUI that adds workstation to a collection without using the SMS MMC console. So it's nice and easy for the PM or helpdesk person to add workstations in a project rollout or a day to day task... either using a CSV file for a large rollout and a gui for one offs...