After using the DS to deploy new computers for almost a year now, and making tons of changes to the deployment process I realized that all the history is not necessarily being saved in the the DS. Jobs get deleted, computers get hard drive swaps, people delete the computer's history, or worse, the DS is rebuilt and all history is lost.
So after searching a little with my best friend Google, I found a way to create a text document on the computer to store all the information in and thanks to the DS there is an easy way to put the information in that text file.
First go to a job that you want documented, i.e. Project install and add a new script.
For the script put:
REM Document Job
Echo %JOBNAME%-=*=-%DATE%-=*=-%SERIALNUM%-=*=-%JOBUSER% >> c:\IT_Data\DS_Jobs.txt
This will put the name of the job being run, the date, the serial number of the computer the job is being run on and the user who ran the job on the computer into a DS_Jobs.txt file. I used the -=*=- as a separator to make it obvious. If you want the information on different lines then use:
REM Document Job
Echo **************** >> c:\IT_Data\DS_Jobs.txt
Echo %JOBNAME% >> c:\IT_Data\DS_Jobs.txt
Echo %DATE% >> c:\IT_Data\DS_Jobs.txt
Echo %SERIALNUM% >> c:\IT_Data\DS_Jobs.txt
Echo %JOBUSER% >> c:\IT_Data\DS_Jobs.txt
Echo **************** >> c:\IT_Data\DS_Jobs.txt
You can use any Token from the DS in this information. Some other useful tokens to use here are:
- %ASSETTAG% - assuming you have the asset tag programed in the bios
- %CALLINGJOBNAME% - displays the name of the job that called the current job (i.e. on success run job...)
- %DSSERVER% - This can be useful if there is a chance you might change your DS server or if you just want to make sure you know which server ran the job.
- %COMPNAME% - The name of the computer when the job was run on it
- %TIME% - The exact time the job was run. You would want to add this with the %DATE% token to get the day and time the job was run.
This is mainly useful when you are constantly making upgrades to your deployment process, or if you just want to have a second place that keeps track of the jobs that were run on a computer. This can also be helpful if a computer dies but the hard drive is still accessible; it will allow you to look at all the installs run on the computer. The down side is you will need to put this script in each job, but an easy copy and paste can make things easier.