Thu, 2/11 • 38:35
SPEAKERS
Lex, Kelly, Jake, Jordan, JJ
Lex 00:00 --- Everybody, Lex from PDQ.com. It's q&a this week, or you ask the questions and Jordan and I try and answer them. Let's jump in and see, see how well we do today.
Kelly 00:13 --- Here we go, Hi, I am a big fan, we just renewed for the third year running, yay, well done. When can we expect Azure managed devices to be supported, there will come a point this year when Azure devices will outweigh domain devices on our network patch management is needed for Azure device and you guys rock at it. Thanks, TC from the UK,
Lex 00:36 --- Hey TC. You know, we do realize Azure is very important. We are working thinking on that one. What you do need to do to make sure that you can interface with those is make sure you have a local DC that is replicating with that, and then you've got a single source of truth to work from and you should be able to take care of those. Thoughts Jordan?
Jordan 00:58 --- Well Colby that chat a link about a help document about the windows services and why. As is it's not working exactly as hoped, but we do understand that it is a growing need. Absolutely.
JJ 01:11 --- It's something Oh, I've got I've got this from the product owner herself. She said tell them and it's on our list of things we are looking into.
Lex 01:25 --- I think I said that
JJ 01:26 --- Not not very, very helpful. And it's probably the same thing that Lex said, but it is from an authoritative source.
Lex 01:33 --- I don't have authority?
Kelly 01:34 --- No, but we that's straight from the
JJ 01:41 --- Not when it comes to deciding things that are in the product. Probably not.
Lex 01:44 --- No, I'm with you.
Jordan 01:46 --- The vagueness came from a more relevant person.
JJ 01:49 --- Yes. That's what I'm trying to convey here.
Lex 01:51 --- I know you said the exact same, we're just gonna continue to stomp on me. Let's do the next question.
Kelly 01:56 --- He's like, could we please move on? Dear Lex and Jordan, I need to identify work from home laptop upgrade candidates primary criteria is display resolution below 1080 small screens and no second display external monitor. How can I create a report to help find these candidates?
Lex 02:15 --- Alright, so first thing, I'm just going to open up a machine, there's a physical machine on a VM here. And if you go to displays, these are the displays that are attached. Okay. Also, another way to go get that information is to build a WMI query. So let's go to scan profiles. New scan profiles we'll call this displays. And if you go and add WMI will go We'll name this resolution. Yeah, like I can spell that resolution. RESOLUTION. Close enough. And if you go and you look in cimv2. Soon as that enumerates here, we're going to go look for its thing w32 displays, or desktop, what a desktop displays. Desktop monitors right here. If you run this, okay, notice on this machine that I'm running on, it's got two displays. And as I start scrolling across here, I believe we have resolutions, right? Check it out. Screen height, screen width. Now I believe that's what it's set to it may not be the max. And if that's Jordan.
Jordan 03:30 --- Yeah, but I think in most cases, people can have it set pretty close to the max. Yeah,
Lex 03:35 --- it's a place to start looking at it. Right. So. Yeah, so that's where I would go start working from there. By the way, thank you, Brooke. Thanks, Josh. guys gave me the heads up on that one this morning.
Kelly 03:49 --- Next question. Hi, guys, how is it possible to create a shortcut on the desktop? Is that possible that you offer this possibility directly in PDQ Deploy soon? Thanks, Damien s.
Lex 04:01 --- Damon, there's a couple ways to go about that. And I was looking through the chat earlier. And there's some PowerShell ways to do it. The way I do it, which is super simple is notice I made an icon called do this stuff. I'm going to go into deploy, we'll make a new package and we're gonna do a file, copy step. And ultimately, I'm gonna grab that source, right, there it is do the stuff. There's that link. And then I'm gonna paste that into public. Desktop, it'll show up on everybody's desktop. So that's the way I would do it. Pretty simple, Jordan, any Any thoughts?
Jordan 04:38 --- There's way I would spell public correctly. But other than that, this is this is work if you get public, I'm sure we've I know that there are ways to do that with PowerShell or other ways, but it's going to be more common, just unnecessary complexity. Yeah, the file copy is definitely your best bet.
Lex 04:54 --- And spelling is important. That's That's how I'd go about it. What else we got guys?
Kelly 05:03 --- Hey guys, I may have Dell workstations that are Intel v pro Intel AMT ready, I know I may need a license to activate it. Does PDQ inventory capture information that can help identify these v pro rated computers? Some literature says look for the V pro logo on the box. Sincerely, Chad B.
Lex 05:24 --- Now, I don't know if I can automate looking at the box, because I'm assuming you're thrown away after the fact. But I don't know. What do you think, Jordan?
Jordan 05:31 --- I thought that was a joke and trying to research this one. It is legitimately the answer a lot of things. And then you get a whole bunch of links that go to a dead page on Intel. So there's some things that I did find that I haven't been able to test yet. But that might be useful. When v Pro is up and running it under a cimv2 SMS. There's a SMS underscore empty object that's built in WMI. Okay, so you can search for that one.
Lex 06:00 --- Should we see if we get that.
Jordan 06:02 --- I doubt we have it turned on on that machine.
Lex 06:04 --- That's probably okay. It's good point. I know I'm turned on. And I don't even know if we have it on its machine.
JJ 06:10 --- Is this a blog post, is this a blog post that we need to write ourselves?
Jordan 06:13 --- I could definitely look into it. I don't know if we have the machines where I can actually get the positive results. The other part which would be useful, I think is the V pro does have a PowerShell module. You can import from that. So you could build a scanner that looks for it. If it's not enabled in any way, you're probably going to get like that dotnet class is not there type of error. So it's search for the error. There's not a direct a direct this is there. But if you're not finding the right classes, it's probably not running. But I just started looking at it this morning. As JJ said, I'll probably be doing a deeper dive and see if I can come up with a blog for that.
Lex 06:48 --- That's our way of kind of running around going I don't know exactly, but there's some ideas on where to go. So yeah, thanks, Jordan.
Kelly 06:57 --- Hey, guys, it's me again, I am referring to Chad B. Is there a way to integrate PDQ inventory with Intel AMT remote management may be so I can right click on a computer and launch into the KVM over IP or integrate with meshcommander.com to achieve this. Thanks again, Chad.
Lex 07:18 --- So Chad when you're building tools, so you can right click, it boils down to can you have a command line that you can pass parameters to. Let's just go take a look at some of the tools that we've already got built here. Customize, let's we'll take a look at the open admin$ share. Okay, again, all we're doing here is calling explorer exe and then passing the computer target host name. And we're looking. So to make that happen, there'd have to be a command line that you'd have to be able to pass that parameter to the variables that you can pass when you're highlighted or right there. Check it out JJ, use the highlighter boom, right there. And now, without knowing AMT in the command line, that's where I'd go.
Jordan 08:00 --- So this is the bump up my microphone now, the PowerShell module we're talking about. I fiddled with it a little bit yeah, it's not my it's not the most intuitive tool like if you have to specify a fully qualified domain name, it won't default to the machine you're running on when you're running the commands. But if you have if you have that module somewhere where it's trusted and other machines can import it, you could then build a scanner that goes there and runs it you just have to specify either IP or fully qualified domain name per scan which we may have the variable for and you can get a whole lot of things like the power settings alarm clocks there's there's a lot in there with AMT where you can do the modules looks pretty powerful. It's just not it's not on my initial look not my favorite so far.
Lex 08:44 --- Again, some places to go take a look at some ways that we try and attack that.
Kelly 08:52 --- And our final question from Chad be if you were to make your own Valentine's Day card for Lex what would it look like? And what would it say?
Lex 09:03 --- If you're gonna make one I don't care what's on the outside just put money in the inside when you send it to that's okay, I'm not the one that should answer that one.
JJ 09:13 --- I don't even I'm not even gonna make a Valentine's card for my fiancé so what
Lex 09:18 --- I don't get one if she doesn't get one.
JJ 09:20 --- So there's a there's a hierarchy here Lex Yeah, I'm hurt Jordan?
Jordan 09:25 --- I can't use that language on the webcast.
Lex 09:28 --- Jake Come on man. You got my back made me a Valentine's Day card we use crayons okay. Scratch and sniff scratch smell she got I love it already. I think that's just permanent marker. Depends on depends on the scotch or whiskey.
Kelly 09:48 --- I got one for you Alex. Okay,
Kelly 09:49 --- in coming!
Lex 09:51 --- Nope. If I could catch that's a mento. Oh, no, it's not.
JJ 09:57 --- three year old candy heart.
Lex 10:00 --- Turn into powder when it hit the floor.
Kelly 10:01 --- And joy.
Jake 10:02 --- realized I was muted, but yes, I'm going to make you one Lex
Lex 10:06 --- Oh, thanks, man.
Jake 10:07 --- It'll be a video like an E card. doing like Tick Tock dance or something.
Kelly 10:18 --- hey guys wondering if there are plans to add the ability at the deployment level to limit concurrent connections and deployments, you can do so globally in the options, but not on a per deployment basis. Sincerely, Jay, beck.
Lex 10:34 --- Alright, Jay, again, thank you for pointing out where we find this, preferences under performance. Here's how you set them globally, guys. There is not a way to currently set that per deployment. I think it's kind of a cool idea. Maybe we'll send that up. You know, run that up. flagpole. But this is where you set it. I will tell you this, okay. I've worked a lot of customers have a lot of machines, and some have a little machines. And I will tell you, this works really, really good. You know, I think the most I've ever deviated from the default, I think was 15,000 end nodes. And we bumped it up to like 64 at a pop. So I would play with this. I guess? That's the only way I'd mess with is right there. Because that's the only place you actually can mess with it. So how's that for dancing around?
Jordan 11:27 --- Is a lot of words to not give a specific,
Lex 11:30 --- a lot of words to not say, you know, you have to do it globally. There we go. Thanks, Jordan. Appreciate that.
Jordan 11:37 --- I mean, for that one, there's not a lot. We're not really in the development process. So if there is something coming like that we wouldn't know until it was closer. To be in release. Ready. Yeah.
Lex 11:49 --- Oh, interesting idea though.
Kelly 11:53 --- Moving old previously scanned equipment to storage. I'd like to keep details on this equipment processor, HD type space, memory, etc. from previous scans, but not have it displayed on standard PDQ scans and reports going forward. Is there such a thing as a hide attribute to do this? Thanks. K Kirkland.
Lex 12:14 --- Hey, kay Kirkland. Okay, so a couple things. All right. First thing again, let's say you're, you're retiring machines, if you go into your Active Directory. If you delete them out of active directory, you have full sync like I have here, they're going to come out of your inventory. So if you want to keep those in your plan and clean up your Active Directory, you want to do import only. Okay, so that you keep them. Now let's say you do keep them, you don't want them to be part of the scans. Okay, what you would do is say you'd right click on this and go do not allow the scan so it won't get a scan. So now you can retain that data. As for hiding it, so you can't see it. The only thing I can think of is what Jordan came up with earlier today, it was like export the data at that point. But this point is not going to scan, you can still do queries and and that on it. I guess you could make a collection of machines that no longer, you know, that don't have allow scan on them so that you know you can exclude them from reports. But that's how I mean kind of a roundabout way of going at that I guess, Jordan? Did I really muddled muddy that one up too.
Jordan 13:24 --- I don't think there's a there's a direct way on that one, I think Mark and Adobe scannable and making its own collection where you can then say reports exclude that is probably your best bet it shouldn't take as some upfront time cost. But once it's running, then it's just adding new things as they go.
Lex 13:40 --- easy place to find that I believe the allow scans on the computer in the computer table. Allow scan right there. So that's where you'd find that be able to put that collection. So there you go.
Kelly 13:53 --- Dear Lex and Jordan, I just started playing around with auto reports for battery health info, what are your favorite auto reports to make your job easier? Alexander N
Lex 14:06 --- evil laugh for me I just like spamming Jordan. So I'll do a deployment and then make sure he gets all the detail. But favorite auto reports a couple that I think are really really useful. Like if you do a nightly, like a disk scan, you can send a report that does you know, any machine that has less than 10% disk space, so you can kind of keep a monitor that another one that's my favorites. Build an old apps report. And to do that you go to reports, new report, basic report. This one's super easy right computer. And if you use the same naming convention we do in the collections, you name a collection, go to filters. Add that name a collection member contains old. I like to put parentheses around it in case you know something's called cold, call this old apps and run this against all computers, and then group it by computer and you can see what everybody needs. You know, as I guess we'll go look at Catstello here. Here's all the old apps Evernote. Some visual C needs to be updated, Notepad. So there you go. There's an old apps report for you. And one of my favorites, Jordan, you have any favorites? And just that's a lot of old apps for a lab that's been around for less than two weeks. Yeah, well, you know, I had to put something out there to look at,
Jordan 15:29 --- Yeah. So unfortunately, with other reports, that's something I see the value of, but my experience with it is testing to make sure it works before new, new version is released. And so I've built them, but I've never actually gone out to find something hyper useful with it.
Lex 15:43 --- You know, what I do find really useful in in auto reports is when you go to triggers and you do monthly, you can go to day of the week, and you go pick like the fifth Tuesday of the month, and it'll actually figure out the next fifth Tuesday of the month. We did this I think a couple of weeks ago, but yeah, we actually figured that out. Kind of interesting. Hey,
Kelly 16:06 --- hey, guys, is there the possibility of having an SQL version not SQLlite, of PDQ Deploy and inventory in the near future? Timothy? mm.
Lex 16:16 --- Tim, I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibilities. And I can't speak for development. I think it's a great idea. Jordan.
Jordan 16:30 --- I think the initial push to look for it was there was with larger environments, performance issues, but a lot of that's been cleaned up. So I don't know if it's high on the priority list at the moment.
Lex 16:40 --- It's interesting asked for features. And it's like, yeah, I think it's a good idea. But we'd have to check in with development, see what's on the list there. So
Kelly 16:51 --- dear Lex and Jordan, regarding work from home laptops, our VPN policy, unable to change by anyone in my country due to corporate policies, does not allow PDQ services over it and my users rarely come into the office. Is there something besides heartbeat that can be useful to alert me that a laptop is on site and connected? Todd Y
Lex 17:15 --- alert you to alert? I mean, okay. So what does the alerting basically is your heartbeat in inventory? options, You go to network, okay, 300 seconds, I guess you could get really aggressive there. And then there's good and bad with that right? Getting aggressive laptop hits, you'd probably find it sooner,
Jordan 17:36 --- you know, networking is probably going to come talk to you about the chatter.
Lex 17:40 --- Exactly. So I mean, you start up in the amount of times you're pinging, if you got a big environment, you might start a ping before the previous series is completed. So that's a tough one, maybe, you know, you could probably do this. Build a collection of laptops and just ping those specifically,
Jordan 17:59 --- we're not doing a an active look. It's it's difficult to go in there with like, the heartbeat is pretty aggressive when it sees it comes online that you can kick off a whole bunch of things based on that it's, it's difficult to look for a state change when we don't have an active connection, just in the last scan. Which is where...
Lex 18:17 --- my thought is this we have a laptop, right? We can build a scanner basically does it ping right, it doesn't take a look for it. Right? Does that scan on aggressive basis and only its smaller group, as opposed to the entire network. That's a way to try. Not the best answer. But yeah,
Kelly 18:35 --- but an answer nonetheless. Hey, guys, I love PDQ and use it every day. The only thing I could ever hope for is some sort of agent installation that allows me to remotely deploy outside my network. I found that TeamViewer kinda does this with their use of built in scripting, but it feels half Arsed. Will there ever be an agent? Thanks, Jacob. Yes.
Lex 18:59 --- A Jacob. I believe there's going to be one. You know, in fact, I think there needs to be one. As for one that comes out? You know, I? I can't tell you, man. So stay tuned on that.
Jordan 19:17 --- For what we can see. I'm very excited for things that apply in the future. It's just hard to give any dates and stuff on the definitive data.
Lex 19:26 --- And where that becomes hard is like we want you guys to trust what we say. So I hate giving out dates that you know, I have no control over. So stay tuned guys.
JJ 19:35 --- We really love leading you on.
Kelly 19:39 --- Dear Lex and Jordan, I have deployed a program via deploy using heartbeat schedule. I now need to update the program. Do I have to delete all history from the schedule so they will update? Curtis j?
Lex 19:52 --- You have two options. Yes, you can delete it. Or you can take off the let's go build a schedule real quick. You know And apparently we're scheduling reader here. The other thing you can do under options is take off that stop deploying to targets once they succeed, depending on what you're doing, all right, if it's a reboot schedule, and you're just rebooting machines take that off, if it's something that you want to only run once, just go and delete that target history.
Jordan 20:18 --- So, yeah, if it's something outside of our package library, we have before we wrote something in SQL, it goes through and it clears the history based on the schedule ID.
Lex 20:26 --- Yeah, that's right.
Jordan 20:27 --- Not not SQL. It's a command line. But we had the command line for PDQ Deploy will let you clear out the the target history,
Lex 20:36 --- that webcast was automating packages, not in your package library. And I believe we've got the link to that sequel there, too. So check that one out. That's a much better. point for Jordan.
Kelly 20:51 --- Gentlemen, what is the best way for a multiple site setup? Currently, we have 23 separate locations set to only sync PCs from their OU and we use DFS replication for files. But we have to export inventory collections and deploy packages and then import them into each location. Is there a better way? Sincerely RRRay
Lex 21:15 --- Okay, so if you're not managing everything centrally, you're building packages and collections and then distributing them out? I mean, can you think of a better way to automate I mean, you're gonna have to do the export, you have to do the import, because that's just how you're gonna have to do it to get it out. Any ideas on how to automate or make that simpler, Jordan? I mean, I instantly think the power shells.
Jordan 21:36 --- Well, this is something actually me and Marcel worked out. Late last week, he emailed me with this very thing where it wasn't so much the DFS, he was just putting up on a web server and looking to pull it down. But especially for variables and other things like that, where those are an XML, they don't natively import into PowerShell. But you can import it as an item and specify it as XML. And then you could have it in there. And it's just for, for all the ways of XML that you have to go down to, you have to specify that within the file. I don't have all that in front of me.
Lex 22:08 --- It sounds kind of complex.
Jordan 22:09 --- It's it's, it's actually three or four lines. It's complex on the surface. But once it's
Lex 22:13 --- sounds complex, but you're right, it's not as bad.
Jordan 22:15 --- Yeah. So basically, if the XML is out there on the DFS, where you can access it, you just go you import that item, cast it as an XML. And then it's basically dot sourcing down to where the variables are the information looking for. And then you can do a for-each on that one, with the command line to update the variables. And it should do all that. And it should work for packages as well.
Lex 22:36 --- That sounds like a good blog.
Jordan 22:39 --- It probably should be Yeah, that's exactly what Marcel said.
Kelly 22:46 --- Hey, guys, I use a lot of API's in my environment for asset and network management. Currently, I have auto reports in inventory generating CSV files to ingest into my different workflows. Are there any plans to have an API for deploy your inventory? Thanks, guys love the live cast. Sincerely, Chris.
Lex 23:06 --- Hey, Chris. I'm not currently aware of that doesn't put it on the wrong possibilities. You heard anything, Jordan, in regards to API availability,
Jordan 23:15 --- I don't know about API's. But with the command line where you can, you can do a lot with that, that will seem like you can deploy packages or reset schedule, there's just a lot you can do within that one, where it's similar to an API.
Lex 23:28 --- Let me just show you how to get the command line parameters if you go to help, right. And then open elevated command prompt, which I already did there, and you type in PDQ Deploy in this case. There you go. Available commands for the command line, not an API, but it is very, very useful, and should be able to do a lot with that. So that's where you can find information about that.
Kelly 23:56 --- Hey, guys, any plans to add any type of alerting features? Sincerely, Matthew L.
Lex 24:04 --- We do I hope it's like a, like a rooster or something really obnoxious.
JJ 24:09 --- Is that monitoring specifically?
Lex 24:12 --- Honestly, I have an alerting feature. I mean, are we talking triggers on a database? Like if this happens, then alert me kind of a thing?
Jordan 24:21 --- Oh, yeah, it's we don't have an estimate comes down to the active connection again. Yeah, we're based on the latest latest scan. So it's hard to have an alert. I mean, you could put in some sort of logic like after you scan if it isn't this, do something with it. But as far as actively, if something triggers, that should be an alert, it's not going to find it till the next day
Lex 24:37 --- I think the closest thing I think there's a webcast out there. Um, I mentioned, you know, disk space, so you'd run the scan an hour later, produce the report that has and then you could probably do some PowerShell on that, but nothing native at this point.
Kelly 24:54 --- Hey, guys, is there a good way to share variables between inventory and deploy? Thanks, Aaron. W
Lex 25:01 --- you know, I should just pull up that webcast where we have the PowerShell, I think,
Jordan 25:06 --- yeah. And well, the issue is on that one is the inventory and deploy variables. And that one, we had a specified CSV, where you could go through and with the name and everything and import both of them.
Lex 25:18 --- Yeah. But you have to set the same variable up in each deployment inventory, if you set them up, and then the PowerShell would update it.
Jordan 25:24 --- Yeah. And this one, this is, if we're going back to the we built last week, which I should I'll put that up on. On the GitHub. It's basically if you export from one of them, the variables and how you can import them with the XML, where it's not nearly done, it really is a pretty quick one, it's just all about importing that file.
Lex 25:41 --- So initially, they got to build the, you know, same variable in both and then that, take care of it.
Jordan 25:47 --- Yeah. So I guess what I'll do because I saw someone if I could email that to them as well. I'll put that up on our get under bonus content. Once this one's over, and you can get it from there.
Lex 26:00 --- Alright, you're my hero, Jordan.
JJ 26:04 --- Should we do a speed round?
Kelly 26:06 --- Yeah, let's jump into it. This is one that we kind of answered earlier in the webcast. Hey, guys love the software, we're looking to move fully into Azure AD. How does PDQ like or support? This also does PDQ support the Azure VPN tunnel? Thank you, m s.
Lex 26:23 --- I mean, kind of like I said earlier, you got to have a local source to to work with. And in that case, just replicate your. And it's also good to have a local source so that in case there's a issue with connecting Azure, you've got to look the source, but from that local source, you can work from it. That's how I would do it seems to work pretty good. Not a bad idea to have a decent backup on site. I did it in under a minute. Score.
Jordan 26:50 --- Keep it on the speed round.
Kelly 26:51 --- Let's go for it. Hey, guys, is there an existing video or tutorial to get started using PDQ Deploy for Windows patch management? Rick haitch.
Lex 27:01 --- There's a ton of them, but a couple of easy ones you'd look for. I'd search for set it and forget it. I'd look for automated patch management. probably fine. Those two videos should easily get you on your way.
Jake 27:15 --- Boom, there it is. Next one.
Kelly 27:20 --- Hey guys, in PDQ inventory, Windows 1020. h2 is shown as 2019 in the SP release column. Is there a way to change that? Joseph P.
Lex 27:32 --- I, if that is a collection that we maintain? I would say I don't think there's a way to change that. Any thoughts? Jordan trying to pull it up right now?
Jordan 27:44 --- Um, well, it's based it's a it's a default column. I don't know whether we can change that data specifically, if it is something that
Lex 27:53 --- check it out. I can't I just pulled it up to try and like rename it.
Jordan 27:57 --- Well, I know he's saying so if you close that down, okay, I get the question. There's a SP release column in the main window there. Oh, it says 1809. It's in Colby says it is 2009, not 2019. But it's same thing. That one in particular, because they did change from the four digit to that one. I don't know how to change what's in the column there. If it is something that we do need to look at changing on the product, we put in ticket with support, we can start looking at it. Okay.
Lex 28:26 --- All right. Thanks for taking that one. man went down
Kelly 28:29 --- the wrong path. That's alright. But you did it fairly quickly. So that's, that's still under a minute. Oh, hey, guys, how can I find PCs in inventory that have office 16, but different versions of 64 and 32. bit
Lex 28:42 --- Let's see office. So I'll go filter, type an office. There's our office 2016, 16 and 32 bit, I don't have any. I would imagine once you pull that you can go look if it's in X 86. Or man, any thoughts on that Jordan?
Jordan 29:03 --- Only thing I can think of is like a PowerShell scanner, where if you know where you're looking for, for which architecture then you could build a collection, including the office 2016. And if it's there, then break it down. Just build the new collection off of that. For the last one. I've written the chat and said 2009 is how it appears in the registry, which is where we're pulling that from
Lex 29:21 --- Oh, good to know.
Kelly 29:25 --- Hey, guys, is there a way to create a report showing system specs in one report specifically CPU memory, system drive, total size and video card or onboard video in one report, Matthew L.
Lex 29:39 --- So those are pulling from different tables. And if you're doing basic reports, and if you link them using basic reports, and it gray's them out you're gonna have to go do a SQL report and then do your joins in Union tables that way so again, depending on we got the computer table, let's look at CPU. Can I go, Let's see disk drive, apparently I can at this point, and it's going to start eliminating, you know, the links are taken care of on the backend. So if the links eliminate that you're going to have to go to SQL to do that. So
Kelly 30:16 --- is there a way for inventory to trigger deploy, if it finds a PC in a container that is missing the software? Thanks, m S
Lex 30:25 --- Absolutely. So you would build a, let's just do this... new dynamic collection. Actually, let me get this to it's gonna show up in the right place, right? new dynamic collection will say I'm going to say 7- zip or missing seven zip, right? Because I can spell 7-zip, that's why I'm picking it. And actually did that would have been bad if I couldn't, right. So application name contains seven zip. And anytime you're looking for machines that are missing it any one to many relationship, you want to find the ones that have it using a contains, and the return on any from that container. So there's all the machines now let's say this is your antivirus or whatever, you set a fairly aggressive schedule that goes out and runs on a, you know, hourly basis to go update those and then, you know, set a fairly aggressive application scanning should be able to take care of that.
Jordan 31:17 --- He also specified a specific container, which I assumed is Oh, you So you could add another another filter in there that basically says an OU is
Lex 31:26 --- Absolutely. Thank you.
Kelly 31:31 --- Gentlemen, the Adobe Reader DC predefined deployment fails with error 1603. Sincerely, W. McKinnon.
Lex 31:40 --- Okay, Adobe Reader. Now, I think I remember this right. Once Adobe Reader's installed, you just need to do the patch. Right?
Jordan 31:48 --- The patch, I was kind of falling along with the conversation on this one. And I believe Not even within our product, but just with this installer, in particular, there's been a lot of people wouldn't have an errors. So I, my guess is if that is the case, you're probably going to be seeing a quick follow up from Adobe with better installer. If it if I'm wrong on that. I apologize. But I think I remember seeing that. If you go into the Adobe site, there's people that are having installer issues on that one.
Lex 32:15 --- Interesting, because there's the full install, there's the patch. So
Jordan 32:20 --- Adobe has a bug that user has to be logged on in the continuous release of reader this row.
Lex 32:24 --- Wow, okay. All right. Well, stay tuned for a new one from Adobe. Hmm.
Jordan 32:29 --- Yeah. So my guess is that error is causing enough problems, you're probably gonna see an out of band update at some point.
JJ 32:34 --- You guys are really keeping to the speed round aren't ya?
Kelly 32:38 --- Oh, yeah. All right, we got five left. All right. Are there any plans to have a web based service so we can have all customers we use in one place? David g?
Lex 32:50 --- I think so. I can't tell you when, again, I'm not sure to development. But guys, it's definitely been a thought that's been talked about a lot here. So
Lex 33:01 --- thanks. That was an easy one. I did that in under a minute.
JJ 33:04 --- We need to have someone from product on these on these PDQ & A's
Kelly 33:07 --- Yeah, we do. I think we'll look into that. Dear fellers, is there a way to pre stage download installation packages on user systems and schedule the installation at a later date? Tony Y
Lex 33:23 --- You know, it's kinda interesting. Yes, I mean, you could do file copies and put the files out there using deploy, and then run a task to run from those install files that have been out there. I think we did a test schedule. We did a webcast on running from a test schedule. So you could actually schedule that in test scheduler That was last week's webcast.
Jordan 33:46 --- I'd say if you're copying that file over. Yeah, I mean, you can copy over if the new file installers out there, you can copy that over that run in no problem. When you do get around to run it, you're going to want to have a step after the install to remove the installer.
Lex 33:58 --- Yeah, that's true. You're gonna have some leftover stuff there. That's usually what deploy takes care for you.
Kelly 34:06 --- Hey, guys, I want to schedule updates, then restart immediately after another one is done. Is there a way to schedule one deployment to finish once Another one is done? Sincerely, David, uppercase G.
Lex 34:20 --- Okay, so I'm thinking all right. I don't know if it's a good way to do it. I mean, okay, so let's say we nest packages, right? So let's say we're going to update Dropbox and file Azul and chrome and greenshot. Right. Create new package. Now the question was reboot in between each of those Was that it? Or just restart after the next one?
Jordan 34:40 --- I think it was restarted after the update was done.
Lex 34:44 --- Okay, so if you nested those and then scheduled all the nesting on that, I guess would be a way to go about that. I'm, I don't know thoughts.
Jordan 34:55 --- Well, if it was referring to doing the actual Windows updates, and he wants to reboot when that's done you can just do a post step at the end of that one that does a reboot. So after it comes back as successful, you could even have the post step based on the results of that one. So only if it was accessible in the update, would it do the reboot?
Lex 35:11 --- There you go.
Jordan 35:12 --- And then the post that should stick around for new versions of the Windows updates when they come through,
Lex 35:17 --- that is true. Thanks, man. I went down a totally different path. Obviously,
Kelly 35:22 --- teamwork.
Lex 35:24 --- Score,
Kelly 35:25 --- teamwork makes the dream work. Hey guys, I've got collections on PDQ inventory in which it detects PCs that do not have some software installed example MS Teams. Then I have in PDQ Deploy a package connected to this collection to install immediately. It is working well. But its inventory is not instantaneous as soon as the PCs fall into the collection. Thanks ezekiel R
Lex 35:53 --- Alright, so again, you're going to run into a timing issue here. So if you think like a heartbeat would do it on a reboot, so that's probably not the best way if you want it to do immediate, right. So at that point, you're going to have to schedule in your schedules do that one did I say? Yep, I did save a schedule here. You'd have to go and be really aggressive. I mean, you do it on intervals, I guess. And I think we can do what? Every minute, Wow, that's really aggressive. You know, I would probably look at ticking that often once an hour, maybe once every 30 minutes. But again, that's really aggressive.
Jordan 36:32 --- The issue with a minute is it would if it doesn't install and then and then scan within a minute, it's going to try to run against the same machine. So you want enough time for the install and the scan after the run to be able to clean up the collection.
Lex 36:45 --- Absolutely. I'd give it probably 15 probably a good rule of thumb. Yeah, you may be able to ratchet that up, down, but again, depending on what you're installing. So that's how you could go about it. I'm gonna leave the easy answer to making that be instantaneous. So
Kelly 37:03 --- and our final question slash comment that's an easy one for you, folks, to everyone involved in doing all your posts on creating a healthy DNS, I inherited an environment and it was beating me but not anymore. Thanks everyone. Jim l
Lex 37:21 --- i think we got to go give Brigg and Josh a hug after this. Yeah,
Jordan 37:24 --- They they do wonderful work. But every time we get any sort of question or something DNS is coming up, we don't even bother looking at it's like get the Brigg
Lex 37:31 --- get Brigg ask Brigg, go find him in the in the 7-11 and give him a coffee and find out about DNS, but yeah, those guys are amazing. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, Brigg. Thanks, Josh. I managed to get through PDQ in a somewhat painlessly, I guess. Hey, thank you guys for watching. Have a Happy Valentine's Day. I'm Lex from PDQ.com. Catch you later.
Kelly 37:58 --- Thanks for joining our webcast today. Congratulations, J Beck and K kirklin. Winners of PDQ swag, send us your info. if you have additional questions, feel free to reach out to our support forums. Thanks again for joining us and we'll see you back here next week.
JJ is a technical creative. He finds joy in programming, automation, and in participating in the artistic sides of things. You'll often find him drinking on Thursdays on the PDQ webcast, rambling and raging remotely at the Bermuda Triangle/heisenbug-tier tech at the studio in SLC.
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