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How do you do it - auto uninstall unused applications and unauthorised installs

  • 1.  How do you do it - auto uninstall unused applications and unauthorised installs

    Posted Jul 23, 2013 02:35 AM

    There's no real "out of box" way to do this in ITMS 7.1, and although I've done this a few different ways in the past, I'd be really interested in hearing from others as to what works, what doesn't and so on.

    Problem 1:

    You have a tier 2 application (installation restricted to authorised computers). You want to ensure that ONLY those machines have the app.

    How I've solved it in the past - create a target for computers that are NOT to have the app by excluding the authorised machines in the target (eg. exclude computers in "Computers authorised for Visio 2013" .  Then hit the resulting target with the software uninstall.

    Cons - Extra server overhead due to having many policies, and having to create an uninstall policy for each application.  Each computer that is NOT in the authorised list will be hit with an uninstall which seems wasteful.  The detection rule will prevent it from running, but it's still an extra policy on each computer.

    Pros - Fairly easy to understand.

     

    Problem 2:

    For expensive applications, you want to automatically remove applications that haven't been used for x days

    How I've solved it in the past - create a filter listing computers that have not used application y for x days.  Target an uninstall at those machines

    Cons - extra overhead for server (having to update the filters), and extra work creating the filter for each app.

     

    The old answer we'd get from Altiris was "Review the reports manually and then uninstall the apps" or "Prevent them from being installed" but in this day and age, automation has to be used.  I'd be interested in hearing how YOU have resolved it for your environment.



  • 2.  RE: How do you do it - auto uninstall unused applications and unauthorised installs

    Posted Jul 23, 2013 07:40 AM

    For Problem 1 create a Filter for each application showing all PCs with that application. Use that in the target of your Uninstall Policy. It means uninstalls will take longer to happen because they'll have to wait for inventory to update but the Policy will only apply to PCs with the software installed that shouldn't be.

    However, I've usually adopted a semi manual approach to this, you don't want to uninstall Visio from the boradroom PC just before the Chief exec give the quarterly results presentation live to analysts...