SMS Site Properties Manager

Where is it?

I'm assuming you have the resource kit installed. From programs open up the Resource Kit program group. Then select the Tools Management Console. Then Open the Systems Management Server Tools tree. Then select the Scalability Tools group. You should see this:

Next, run Site Properties Manager from the right pane. From the tool bar select the connect button. It has a green arrow on it. Next enter your user Site Server Name, Site Code, a network account with privileges to allow you to connect to the SMS database.

Exporting and Importing Properties

The interface appears below. As you can see the site code and Server Name are viewable. The count of available resources is to the right of each tree. By selecting Collections from the left pane all collections are enumerated in the right pane.

You can right-click on a collection in the right pane and select Export Selected Collection. You will then save it as an .SDF file. You also have the option to Export All collections into 1 .SDF file. To do this right-click on the collection tree from the left pane. These steps can be followed for any of the available SMS components.

 To import components you will pretty much follow the same steps as when you exported. Of course, you will need to select import rather than export. You will then need to browse to the correct .SDF file. One area that differs is a dialog that appears asking you to select the settings that you want to import. This box appears below. In this case I was importing some site settings into a new secondary site. The available options in the dialog box must be exported, in advance, to the .SDF that you select.

Using Task Scheduler

You can use the Task Scheduler feature in SMS Site Properties Manager to set a time when settings will be automatically imported, or when a specified command will be run from the command line.

In the SMS Site Properties Manager window, right-click Tasks in the SMS Site Properties Manager tree, and then click Add to add a new task. In the Task Scheduler dialog box, click either Import or Run a command. If you selected Run a command, type the command in Command line. If you selected Import, type the file name of the file you want to import settings from or export settings to in File name.Select how often you want the schedule to be run. The interface appears below.

SMS Site Properties Manager also supports drag and drop functionality.

Copying Site Settings to Another Site

In the SMS Site Properties Manager window, you can drag site settings from one site to another. When you drag site settings from a site, the settings of the receiving site are changed to match the settings of the source site. In this way, you can quickly propagate basic configurations throughout a test or production environment. After you have copied the basic configuration settings to all the sites, you can use the SMS Administrator console to modify these settings for each individual site.

Creating an Advertisement

You can create an advertisement within SMS Site Properties Manager by dragging a program to a collection. After you do so, the Advertisement Properties dialog box appears with the program and target collection already defined. You can set other advertisement properties in this dialog box, just as you would if you were working in the SMS Administrator console.