The project’s home page is http://opalissccmextension.codeplex.com/

A direct link to the download is http://opalissccmextension.codeplex.com/releases/view/70313#DownloadId=260587

A link to the latest source code is http://opalissccmextension.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/12438#

If you encounter any bugs I apologize but please report them using the issue tracker on Codeplex so they can be fixed in the next update. If you have any feature requests please post on the Codeplex discussions forums so I can try to incorporate them into the next version. The next version will be built around the new version of QIK. If you would like to contribute any documentation please post it up on the documentation portion of the Codeplex site, we have begun a wiki and I would love to see some examples of how people use the IP. I will be posting some examples of how I use the IP shortly.

I would also like to thank Charles Joy and Robert Hearn from Microsoft. Charles for teaching me everything I know about Opalis and QIK and Robert for starting me down the road of making a SCCM integration pack. If you ever have an opportunity to work with either one of these individuals take it, they are wonderful to work with.

I would also like to thank Christoph Voight for compiling all of the images used for the icons in this release.

So, in reference to Charles, enJOY!

Installation Instructions

The first thing you will notice about this release is that it is NOT just an OIP file. This integration pack relies on a number of external .DLL files (enumerated below) for integration with SCCM. Because of this we now have an installer (setup.exe) that registers these into the GAC on your machines. This setup needs to be run on all machines that will have the integration pack installed on them. After setup is run you can register the IP in your deployment manager and distribute the IP normally.

DLL Files and their purposes

• ADMINUI.WQLQUERYENGINE.DLL
  • This is a Microsoft provided DLL. It is a part of the SCCM software development kit
• Microsoft.configurationmanagement.dll
  • This is a Microsoft provided DLL. It is a part of the SCCM software development kit
• Microsoft.configurationmanagement.managementprovider.dll
  • This is a Microsoft provided DLL. It is a part of the SCCM software development kit
• OpalisSCCMInterop.dll
  • This is SCCM integration code written by me. For this release I separated the integration code and interface code (what you see inside of Opalis). This means that I can update the integration code without making people re-import the IP into their environment.

Installation Steps

1. Download Zip File
2. Unpack Zip File
3. Install Setup.exe on all machines that will have the IP installed
4. Register the IP
5. Deploy the IP

You need to have your own version of one of the Codeplex integration packs. There are numerous reasons that this may be true, the biggest one that people have contacted me about is that people are not allowed to run any software that is not supported by a vendor. This applies to all of the code that I have up on Codeplex. This however does not, in many cases, mean that they could not create an integration pack based off of the work on Codeplex for their own environment. So, how would someone go about doing that?

Pre-Requisites

• C# Compiler
  • All of the code that I publish on Codeplex is written in C# (my roots are in C) so you will need a C# compiler to use my code (all my work is done in Visual Studio 2010).
• Source Code
  • This can be downloaded from Codeplex
• QIK Wizard
  • This can be found in your Opalis Source

Steps for Making an IP

1. Get The Code
2. Compile the Code
3. Wrap with the QIK Wizard
4. Run in environment

For the purposes of this example I will use my Active Directory IP as an example

Step 1: Get the Code

To do this we can simply go out to Codeplex, go to source code, and download the latest version of the code.

What is downloaded is a zip Folder containing the source files. Unpack these into a folder

Step 2: Compile the Code

Now that you have a local version of the code you can open it up with visual studio, add in any missing references and compile.

You want to open the solution file. This will setup the project correctly for you.

You now have the project loaded up but you cannot yet compile it (there are errors). This is because all of the reference files do not download, if you expand ‘References’ you will be able to see which references you need to re-add to the project in order for it to compile correctly. The one reference that you will always need to re-add is Opalis.QuickIntegrationKit. This can be found on any machine that has QIK installed.

To re-add the .DLL file simply right click on the references folder and choose ‘Add Reference’

Then choose the reference (for QIK we need to ‘browse’ and locate the actual .DLL file). This will be located at “c:\Program Files\Opalis Software\Quick Integration Kit 3\Bin” on 32 bit systems and “c:\Program Files (x86)\Opalis Software\Quick Integration Kit 3\Bin” on 64 bit systems. You should copy this file local and then add it to your project

Add Reference

You should now be able to compile the code

Step 3: Wrap with QIK

Now you need to install the QIK wizard on a machine and point it at the .DLL file that was created from compiling. The compiled .DLL file will be in /bin/release if you compiled ‘release’ or /bin/debug if you compiled ‘debug’

Copy this to a machine with QIK installed then run the QIK Wizard

Fill out product information for you OIP

Then Add objects from the .DLL file

Then walk through the rest of the wizard

Step 4: Import the OIP

Use the deployment manager to import the new IP into your environment using your normal change control process

I was asked the other day to create a workflow that would send end users ‘formatted’ emails on a schedule (1 per day for 3 days). This is a process that people currently are spending a lot of time doing manually and is a perfect candidate for automation with Opalis (very low hanging fruit).

The Solution

Create a very basic UI (this will probably be upgraded later to have more error checking) and 3 Opalis workflows. The input UI is a basic forms based applet that creates a file on an NTFS network share. We created 4 folders on a network share which we will call, for the purposes of this blog post:

\\Contoso.com\Opalis\Win7Email\Day1Email

\\Contoso.com\Opalis\Win7Email\Day2Email

\\Contoso.com\Opalis\Win7Email\Day3Email

\\Contoso.com\Opalis\Win7Email\Finished

The UI creates a file in the ‘Day1Email’ folder

From here on out it the solution is crafted with 3 (Very Similar) Opalis workflows.

Workflow One

The monitoring policy for this workflow constantly is polling the file share for ‘Day 1′. When a newly created request is found it is parsed and the relevant information is sent to the worker policy which sends the user an email and moves the request to the ‘Day 2′ folder.

Schedule

The next two workflows only should be executed Monday -> Friday. To enable this we setup a ‘schedule’

Workflow 2

The monitor policy for this workflow triggers at 7am every day. The first thing it does it check to see if it is inside the correct schedule (Monday -> Friday), if it is it then polls the ‘Day 2′ folder for people to send ‘Day 2′ emails to. For each one it finds it triggers the worker policy which sends HTML formatted emails and moves the request to the ‘Day 3′ Folder

Workflow 3

The monitor policy for this workflow triggers at 7am every day. The first thing it does it check to see if it is inside the correct schedule (Monday -> Friday), if it is it then polls the ‘Day 3′ folder for people to send ‘Day 3′ emails to. For each one it finds it triggers the worker policy which sends HTML formatted emails and moves the request to the ‘Finished’ Folder. This workflow is almost identical to Workflow 2 with the exception of the file share it checks and the body of the email it sends.

Summary

These are 3 very simple workflows that replace a very time consuming manual process. These are the types of ‘low hanging fruit’ scenarios that we love to automate inside of Opalis.

I have been working diligently on extending my SCCM integration pack and have made a lot of progress.  It now has a large feature set (working on making a few more integration points) that I need to test.  I have tested all of the current objects against my test SCCM environment but I would like others to do the same to see if we can ferret out some bugs before I release a wrapped IP.  As always the IP is up on codeplex http://opalissccmextension.codeplex.com/

This project is currently under heavy development. I am releasing and early version in .DLL form (use Run .Net Object to execute) so that people can test and give feedback.

Completed Features

• Add New Computer
• Assign Package to DP
• Associate Computer Record
• Create Advertisement
• Create Collection
• Create Computer Variable
• Create Package
• Create Program
• Delete Advertisement
• Delete Collection
• Delete Package
• Delete Program
• Get Advertisement
• Get Collection
• Get Collection Members
• Get Computer Variable
• Get Driver
• Get Package
• Get Parent Collection
• Get Program
• Get Sub Collections
• Get System
• Get User
• Get Usergroup
• Modify Advertisement
• Modify Collection
• Modify Collection Add Direct Member
• Modify Collection Add Membership Rule
• Modify Driver
• Modify Package
• Modify Program Supported Platforms
• Modify Program
• Refresh Collection
• Refresh Package at Distribution Point
• Refresh Package Source
• Remove Collection Membership
• Remove Package from Distribution Point
• Set Package Description
• Set Package Source

Features Under Development (Wrapping Code into Opalis Wrapper)

• Get Driver Package
• Modify Driver Package
• Get Task Sequence Package
• Modify Task Sequence Package
• Get Image Package
• Modify Image Package
• Get Operating System Install Package
• Modify Operating System Install Package
• Get Boot Image Package
• Modify Boot Image Package
• Get Collection Variable
• Modify Collection Variable
• Get Software Updates Package
• Modify Software Updates Package
• Get Updates Assignment
• Modify Updates Assignment
• Add CIs to Software Updates Package
• Remove CIs from Software Updates Package
• New Software Updates Package
• New Authorization List
• Synchronize Software Update Point

It has come to my attention that the presentation I delivered at MMS this year never actually got uploaded to the MMS site!  I have modified the presentation to only be my portion (I can’t actually share the peices that Eamon and Charlie did) and have it uploaded to skydrive.  Feel free to download it and take a gander. http://cid-5de81ca270c18b69.office.live.com/self.aspx/Presentation/BB54%20-%20Opalis%20and%20Configuration%20Manager%20%20Real%20World%20Stories%20%5E52%5E6.pptx

Based on our user acceptance testing we have made some modifications to the workflows in the presentation to have more error handling as well as automated end user notifications.  If I get a chance I will blog about the version we now have running in production.

The policy takes two inputs, computer name and advertisement ID.  I loop the policy until I see the client fully accepting the advertisement.

To setup the return information of the policy right click on the policy and open up its options.

Add a string type return (or whatever type you want your policy to return)

Now in your publish policy data you can actually add return data

Now we add some looping logic to our trigger policy based on that return message

And voilà you have a policy loop!

I am wondering what other systems people would like to see Opalis integrate to?  I have a bit of free time to dedicate to writing another IP.  The only requirement I have is that it be a system I actually have access to, I have listed 3 options in the poll below but feel free to suggest others.

Updated the integration Pack to include Property Manipulation Functions.

• Get Object Values
  
  • Gets the values of all properties of given object
    
• Set Object Property Value
  
  • Sets a single-value property’s value
    
• Add Object Property Values
  
  • Adds a new value to a multi-value property
    

This update also fixes some error logging.
This update also addresses some functionality of the “new user” object

• This object now sets a userPrincipalName
  
• This object now enables the new account
  
• This object now correctly displays errors
  

Features

• Create Appointment

  

• Get Appointments
• Cancel Appointment

  

Features

• Get Computer Variables
  • This returns all SCCM configured Computer Variables for the given machine

    

• Add Computer Variable
  • Allows you to add or set machine variables on a machine

    

    

    

Installation

This integration pack includes .DLL files that do not properly register. I am not sure how to work around this using QIK so for now I will provide some documentation on how to manually place the .DLL files into you Global Assembly Cache. The 3 files we need to add to the GAC are

AdminUI.WQLQueryEngine.DLL
Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.DLL
Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider.DLL

After registering and deploying the integration pack to your action servers these files will all be present in the Opalis extensions folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Opalis Software\Opalis Integration Server\Extensions but not registered in the GAC. To register them into the GAC of each action server open up windows explorer on the action server, browse to c:\WINDOWS\Assembly and drag the .DLL files from the extensions folder to the assembly folder.