Symantec Management Platform (Notification Server)

I'm trying to create client jobs in our new 7.1 system and I'm having an issue where the tasks inside the job get cloned when I clone each job.  I have some generic tasks built to restart a service and run a script and I combine those into a client job and then I clone the job and then add another script task or something.  The problem is everytime I clone the job all the tasks that are in the job get cloned also making a big mess out of it.

Since I need to create hundreds of these I would like an easy way to do it without making a huge mess out of things.  We need to create jobs for installing printers so our techs and help desk can push out printer installs.

Ideally I would rather create 1 generic job that alows the tech or help desk to enter the name of the printer at runtime and have it inserted into the script but thats not possible as of yet (feature request!!!).  Also, can we have search available when adding an existing task instead of just the tree view?

Any ideas on how to do this easily instead of creating each job from scratch or making hundreds of duplicate tasks?

crap design decision on Altiris' part here, i think to replicate all the tasks when you clone the job.

We've also got dozens of unwanted tasks being created when we clone jobs. haven't logged it yet, only found it two days ago and haven't had time yet.

Sorry can't be of more help but at least you're not alone!

Yeah I don't know what to do. I need to create install jobs for all of our printers (~900) and if each job has 3 tasks that will be 2700 duplicated tasks. What a mess! I'm not sure if I should just put those tasks in a folder so they get duplicated there and then left alone or what. I know I would rather not build all 900 jobs from scratch, it would save me alot of time to just clone.

I haven't looked it up yet but does anyone know if there is a command line interface to create jobs like there was in 6.x? That saved me tons of time scripting the creation of the jobs.

I agree, this is a serious 7.1 design flaw. Just today, I copied a "Deploy Image" job which had within its contents about 5 individual tasks, plus 3 other jobs which had about 5 tasks within each job. By cloning that single job, I was left with 20 additional tasks named like "Deploy Windows 32-bit_1" or "Reboot to Win32 PXE_1", etc. Then I had to spend about 20 minutes going through, deleting, and replacing, all of the extraneous tasks I accidentally created. What a stupid waste of time.

When I clone a job, I want that new job to use all of the exact same tasks the previous job uses, not create duplicate tasks in addition to the ones I created previously, that others can edit with different settings than I had configured originally. The reason we create jobs is because we want to establish a standard by which everything is run. When software is installed, I want it installed with the parameters I specify. By allowing duplicate tasks to be created, we allow others to use different settings other than the ones we have explicitly set. Not to mention, it just causes an ugly mess.

This would be less of a problem if the CMS/ITMS/NS/WhateverWeCallitNow 7.1 permissions were better; but as they stand, we have to give techs God-like rights, then strip away what we don't want them to have, rather than giving them limited rights, and then selectively giving them additional specific rights as needed.

Just one more design flaw of 7.1. Sigh.

Jason - Unfortunately, the only way around this that I've found so far is to create a brand new job from scratch, then point it to each individual task. Yes, it sucks. Very bad design - not sure why this didn't come up in the development phase. I'd love to hear the reasoning why it was left like this.

It would be one thing if you were able to delete a copied job and all the associated tasks were deleted, but as it stand, you have to go through and delete all those tasks separately. And as you know, those tasks could be anywhere within your Jobs and Tasks pane. Just a really poor design decision on Symantec's part.

Have you brought this up to support as an issue, or to your sales rep?  As a partner, this is a frustrating thing we're seeing as well, and something we're working through the channels for (we hope) resolution.

The reason you start with a high role and subtract rather than with a low role and add is that security has multiple hidden privileges.  I sympathize with you on the confusing nature of permissions in Altiris, however.  I sure wish the documentation were better for the hundreds of checkboxes we have available to us.

I've had to call support with regards to DS 7.1 for so many more pressing issues, that to bring up annoyances like this would be just too time-consuming, given all the other hats I wear in our environment. It comes down to picking your battles, really. If I can find a workaround on my own, I do it. I mean - something like this, surely internally within Symantec - they've got to copy jobs themselves, right? Can't they see how difficult they are to delete? Do they really need me to make a support ticket telling them it's difficult to do? And what good will it do me, when the answer I will get from 1st or 2nd-level support is, "Yeah - that sucks, we'll send that to Dev. Just keep doing what you're doing for the interim." Ticket closed. I don't have time to be a beta-tester for a supposedly finished product. That's what beta testing is for.

The answer is to use DS 6.9 for something like this. Not a popular idea with some folks, but DS 6.9 is head and shoulders above DS 7.1 on a lot of things, cloning jobs is just another example...

this exact thing just happend to us.  all the sudden all my jobs and tasks were doubled with _1 next to them.  poor thinking on symantecs part.

Maybe if i could select more than one task in the "add existing" area i wouldnt have to clone my job.  it takes forever to hit "add existing" and scroll through my huge tree to find one silly little task and then do that all over again 30 more times.