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Targetting Users - 10/6/2008 9:44:44 AM

rjenk74

Posts: 26
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Joined: 4/2/2008
Status: offline

Hello,

do any of you have experince with targetting users as opposed to systems?

We are to setup an 'account' that wishes to target both users and desktops and it concerns us.

They bascially want to user to decide when to install software and on whichever machine they are working on at the time. So all user targetted apps will be non-mandatory, and all mandatory apps will be targetted at systems.

We have tested the user targetting and techincally it appears to work ok, but just wondered how well you have seen it in practice? Of course a lot will depend on how the app is packaged and installed but what other problems have you encounterd.

We also wonder about uninstalls, as though they don't seem interested at the moment, we can see it being an issue in future (specifically with licensing) so do any of you have experince with some form of automatic uninstall, maybe using software metering to see how long an app has been unused and uninstall it that way?

thanks for any help
cheers
BP

Post #: 1

RE: Targetting Users - 10/7/2008 1:23:42 PM

hcortez463

Posts: 785
Score: 63
Joined: 4/8/2005
Status: offline

losts of post on this subject in this forum and you will find out that most people try to get away from this setup. Its not that it does not work but as you can ask Sherry :) you will have your fair share of problems.. :) See bellow some links

http://www.myitforum.com/forums/m_107807/mpage_1/key_target%252Cusers/tm.htm#107954

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/skissinger/archive/2006/10/25/Target-Computers-by-Users_2700_-usergroup-membership.aspx

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RE: Targetting Users - 10/7/2008 2:21:06 PM

skissinger

Posts: 2167
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Joined: 9/13/2001
From: Sherry Kissinger
Status: offline

I was hoping someone else would jump in! Thanks Hector! One of the main things you'll encounter is a decided lack of people targetting users or usergroups which contain users. I pretty much had to write my own tools to get some automation done--the 3rd party tools don't look in that WMI namespace for checking user policies or allowing you to rerun an advert (for example). Mainly because it's a huge headache and was close to impossible (but I didn't let that get in my way...) If you do go down that road--expect it to be a lonely one. Download the Toolkits and begin to get familiar with policyspy & clispy, and how to interpret it. It's the only way you'll survive.

Before I left the old place, we had just finished moving to machine-based collection for 99% of advertisements. And the new place doesn't do users/usergroups either. So I think now you are left with 1 person in the world I know of that uses & has a good understanding of user-based advertisements, Stuart Watret. At least, in all my years on this forum, no one else has indicated an interest.

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(in reply to hcortez463)

Post #: 3

RE: Targetting Users - 10/10/2008 5:18:37 AM

rjenk74

Posts: 26
Score: 0
Joined: 4/2/2008
Status: offline

thanks for the replies, the links were very usefull!

one 'plus' i have is that though they didn't listen to us with regard to targetting users, at least we managed to get it such that all apps that will target users will be non-mandatory, so they can in theroy re-run from the run advertised programs as much as they want. Any app that is mandatory will be targeted to systems.

I still get a cold shiver when i think of when they will start asking about licenses and unistalls :-(

But i have my email chains detailing all the problems and reasons why not to do it svaed in a dozen places :-)

thanks again

(in reply to skissinger)

Post #: 4