MDT 2010 Application ordering (New Tool) December 9, 2009

Posted by keithga in MDT 2010, PowerShell, VBscript.
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Got an E-Mail from a friend of mine recently:

Are you bored? Might be a good utility to build. The PowerShell script [..] posted at http://blogs.technet.com/mniehaus/archive/2009/09/09/sorting-the-contents-of-an-mdt-2010-deployment-share.aspx shows how to rearrange the items in a folder – basically, it just reorders the GUIDs in the group and then saves the modified GUID list. The script only does alphabetical sorting, but some might want to manually rearrange – not terribly easy to do in PowerShell, so it would require a real UI.

For most scenarios, I recommend using Application Dependencies to ensure that applications install in the correct order.

I really didn’t think much of it until recently. When I had some applications that could install stand alone, by themselves, however when both were installed, they needed to be installed in a specific order. If I were creating a CustomSettings.ini file, I would manually ensure that the Applications were placed in order. However, if the user selected the applications from the wizard, then there was no way to ensure the order of the apps unless we modified the order within the ApplicationGroups.xml manually. <yuck>

The blog above shows how application ordering can be done. Simply create a temporary sub-folder, an move the items *in order* to the temporary subfolder and then move everything back.

Solution

This solution should work for sorting both Folders and Application Items within MDT 2010. The application is a simple wrapper around the MDT 2010 Powershell provider, and simply makes calls to move Applications and/or folders using Powershell.

User Interface

The wizard will prompt you for the correct MDT 2010 Deployment Share to use. The deployment share must be visible within the MDT 2010 console on the same machine and using the same user account. If you have not opened any MDT 2010 Deployment shares on this computer and this account, please run the MDT 2010 console, and open your Deployment Share.

When selected, the wizard will display a list of all applications and application folders present on the MDT 2010 Deployment share. You may highlight the Application you wish to move, and use the “Move Up” and “Move Down” buttons to rearrange the order of the application. 

 

When you are done, press the “Commit” button to run the Powershell script that performs the re-ordering. The applications will not be sorted until the script has finished running.

The MDT 2010 Powershell Provider will do all the necessary work to ApplicaitonGroups.xml on the back end.

You can view the script by saving the results to a txt file.

Restrictions and Limitations

It is recommended that you backup your MDT 2010 deployment periodically,

You can sort the contents of only one folder at a time.

You can not sort Folders within Application entries. Folders are always displayed first.

Link

http://cid-5407b03614346a99.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog/MDT2010Ordering.zip

License

This tool is provided “as-is”, with no warranties.
You agree not to hold the author, Keith Garner liable for any damages.
This tool is provided “Free of Charge” for “Evaluation” purposes only.
This tool is copyrighted by the author, Keith Garner, and he retains all
ownership, this tool is not public domain.
You are not permitted to redistribute this tool without the express written
consent of the author, Keith Garner.
The license for this tool can be revoked and/or superseded at any time, by the author, Keith Garner.
Of course, you should backup your critical files before running any 3rd party program downloaded off the internet.

By Keith Garner ( http://keithga.com ) – Deployment Consultant – Dec, 2009
Xtreme Consulting Group ( http://deployment.xtremeconsulting.com )
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 ( http://microsoft.com/deployment )
Copyright Keith Garner (keithga.com), All Rights Reserved.