Utilize Your SMS Wealth - Part III
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Pierson Glyn-Williams Disclaimer: Let me state clearly, that I am in no way associated with the Altiris company. All information I provide is at my own discretion and in no way is my employer responsible for the articles or comments I so choose to publish. If you are interested in becoming more familiar with any of the associated products mentioned throughout this article, previous articles or future articles, please visit the related vendor sites. In the last article we looked at the products we will be using to develop an Inventory Management System. The information from this series of articles is based on cumulative knowledge, which is one of the reasons why I didn't provide subtitles for each of the articles. I took you through an overview of the Altiris product line that we are using and how they will be used in our system. Now, it is important to break down everything that needs to be done in order to achieve our objective, which is to create a web application on top of Altiris. I am going to treat this series of articles like an open source project. I had a couple requests to send over a project breakdown, so I edited out any sensitive information and the results are below. The next articles we will detail how we accomplished each of the core tasks to reach our milestones. Feel free to send feedback or comments regarding what you would like to see in any upcoming articles. Don't be too concerned about the things you don't understand. We will be diving right in to these tasks as we move forward. We are currently at task 38-40 right now. We had many snags in the installation and configuring Altiris which I will post as separate articles. These snags add for great content since none of the solutions is presently published in the community.
Systems Integrator
|
ID |
Task_Name |
|
1 |
Install and Configure Altiris |
|
2 |
Clean Removal of Evaluation Configuration |
|
3 |
Prepare to Install Notification Server |
|
4 |
Install Notification Server |
|
5 |
License Manager |
|
6 |
Install Inventory Solution Component |
|
7 |
Install Web Admin for SMS Component |
|
8 |
Configure Notification Server |
|
9 |
Configure Agents for XML output |
|
10 |
Configure Machine Inventory Agent |
|
11 |
Configure Inventory Solution Agent |
|
12 |
Configure Exchange Agent |
|
13 |
Configure Serial Number Agent |
|
14 |
Configure SMS integration |
|
15 |
Configure Altiris to post XML inventory data instead of MIF |
|
16 |
Set Notification Server Security Context |
|
17 |
Enable Pivot reporting for Inventory Solution |
|
18 |
Enable WebAdmin |
|
19 |
TroubleShooting |
|
20 |
Configure NS Client |
|
21 |
Create NS client package |
|
22 |
Push Notification Server Client to Client Computers |
|
23 |
Get confirmation for NS Policies (Polling Schedules,etc) |
|
24 |
Configure Event handlers for Pro-Active Error response |
|
25 |
Preparing Data Sources |
|
26 |
Establish connection to Altiris database |
|
27 |
Install the SQL Analyzer and |
|
28 |
Access rights |
|
29 |
Consolidation of Equipment database (Older System) |
|
30 |
Prepare a PeopleSoft View (for CostCentre & CostCentre MGR) |
|
31 |
Gain access to Property Services database (for Floor, Location, WorkStationID, and CostCentre) |
|
32 |
Create a view in to Property Services |
|
33 |
Verify Altiris data (2days) |
|
34 |
Exchange data counts accurate? # of employees,etc. |
|
35 |
Exchange data just queried? Or is it placed in Alritis database? |
|
36 |
Consideration for Standalone inventory? |
|
37 |
Build an initial view |
|
38 |
Verify data and get an overview of the data tables |
|
39 |
Create asp form (read,write,delete) record form into Altiris |
|
40 |
Customize Altiris database to the Inventory Management System |
|
41 |
Extend Altiris database to prepare for importing of equipment mdb table(s) |
|
42 |
Verify Tables with Client (Management) |
|
43 |
Ensure data and tables are unqiue |
|
44 |
Port over data from equipment mdb to IMS |
|
45 |
Extend Altiris database to include fields from PeopleSoft view |
|
46 |
Extend Altiris database to include fields from Property Services view |
|
47 |
Lease Management (1week) - dependecies |
|
48 |
Implement Contract Mgt to Extend IMS and create canned reports |
|
49 |
Verify calculations against those of our current system |
|
50 |
Port lease data from equipment mdb to IMS |
|
51 |
Verify calculations and data |
|
52 |
Build Inventory Management System (23days) dependencies |
|
53 |
Assess client requirements, expectations and define workflow process |
|
54 |
Client to define values to port over from equipment mdb (Older system) |
|
55 |
Define fields and view for each page of the interface |
|
56 |
Define all calculations for IMS |
|
57 |
Create each page of IMS (asp,j/vbscript) |
|
58 |
Add trigger -- event procedure to populate IMS from PS view |
|
59 |
Add and verify calculations |
|
60 |
Run tests to ensure that data entered or changed does not get overwritten by Altiris polling process |
|
61 |
Pass parameters and queries to web reports (Inquire about a dev contact from Altiris) |
|
62 |
Implement Event Procedures (4days) |
|
63 |
When a new machine is added to the network an email event is triggered |
|
64 |
Incomplete records trigger an event procedure |
|
65 |
Testing and training (4days) dependent |
|
66 |
Setup Security, Custom Views and Additional Reports (7days) |
|
67 |
Create custom views and access rights for Mgt |
|
68 |
Create custom views and access rights for Support |
|
69 |
Create custom views and access rights for OPS |
|
70 |
Create any outstanding reports which are not currently available as a canned report |
|
71 |
Configure Audit Agent (audit.rul) |
|
72 |
Create custom groups for software audits |
|
73 |
Create groups for standard and non-standard software |
|
74 |
Ignore version build data? |
|
75 |
Exclusion Filters |
