Collecting a Value from a Plain Text File using Altiris v6

To my knowledge Altiris Notification Server v6 (out of the box) does not allow you to collect information out of a text file. One of my clients needed to accomplish this and so I rolled it around in my head for a couple of days and came up with this solution.

Step 1

The first hurdle is how to get that information from the Cisco .pcf file into someplace Altiris can read the information.

To accomplish this, I wrote a VBscript to parse the pcf file and capture the data listed after username= and write it to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Company Info.\VPNID value. In addition I created some outputs for situations like a missing file and where the username = "was blank". Once I tested this and found it successfully wrote the data to the registry I set it up as a job in the NS.

Step 2

The next challenge is to get the information from the registry into Altiris where we can report on it. To accomplish this task I used the Custom Inventory shown below. To accomplish this I would suggest the following Juice Article - http://www.symantec.com/connect/downloads/altiris-... and the Altiris Knowledge https://kb.altiris.com/display/1/kb/article.asp?ai...

Step 3

Once this has been accomplished you will need to setup a task to run the new custom inventory. And can add these values to your reports.

I've also used this solution in a similar way on another account to collect PC owner data by creating a Form / questionnaire that clients have to answer once a month. The questionnaire runs once a month on a schedule asking end users to update their contact information, department etc. and writing the collected data to the Registry. Once it's there you can simply collect the data using the Custom Inventory like in Step 2.