Collections

Divide a collection into multiple smaller collections in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell

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This blog post will be about a question that I recently read on a forum and also already got a couple of times with different customers. That question is if it’s possible to simply create multiple smaller collections of one specific collection. This can be useful when a specific deployment has to be deployed in smaller groups then normally. Also, there are already a couple solution available in the community, like the SCCM Collection Splitter by Mickael Ponsot and the Planning an upgrade of an application  by Jörgen Nilsson, but as always, not every solution fits every customer. In my case(s) these solution didn’t fit, as it shouldn’t have to much options and it shouldn’t rely on static properties. That’s why I created a simple …

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Approve, Block, Unapprove, or Unblock a Client in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell

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This blog post will show how to approve, block, unapprove, or unblock clients in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell. Three of these actions, approve, block and unblock, are also accessible via the console, but via PowerShell it is very easy to perform these actions for a whole collections. This creates the possibility to create a custom automatic approval in combination with for example a collection membership. The fourth action, unapprove, is not accessible via the console and only accessible via WMI (with some help of PowerShell). Solution In WMI there is the class SMS_Collection, which has the methods ApproveClients and BlockClients. These methods can be used to (un)approve and (un)block clients and they require both the same two parameters. They both require a boolean and an …

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Update Collection Membership in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell

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A few weeks ago I’ve got the question if it is possible to speed-up the collection membership update after a new device was added to the database via my Import Comport Form. The short answer is, of course, yes! As this answer would make a really short blog post, I decided to put some more time in it. My first answer could have been, why can’t you wait on the incremental update cycle. As by default, the Use incremental updates for this collection is selected (and grayed-out) for the All Systems collection and the default Interval for Collection Membership Evaluation is five minutes (see this post for more information). Solution Now what can we do when either five minutes takes to long, or the default …

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Show Collection Details in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell – Part 5 (Final): The General Information

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>> Available via download here on the TechNet Galleries! << This week my post will be all about the end result of my series, about showing the Collection Details, of a device, via a PowerShell form. I changed a few small details and added another new tab, with more new information! This new tab shows all the General information about the collections, of which the device is a member. As there is (almost) no more information that can be added, about collection information that affects the device, this will be the last addition to the script/ form. In case someone still misses some important, or logical information, please let me know! Collection Details Form This script creates a nice form to show the Collection Details …

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Show Collection Details in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell – Part 4: The Power Management Settings

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This week another addition to my series about showing the Collection Details, of a device, via a PowerShell form. This week I added another new tab, with more new information! This new tab show all the information about the applied Power Management settings, that affect the device. It’s also good to know that within the Power Management settings, there is an option Never apply power management settings to computers in this collection and when this option is selected the form will show a row with five times Never. So whenever a device shows a row like that, the other Power Management settings aren’t applicable anymore. Collection Details Form This script creates a nice form to show Collection Details of the specified device. At this moment …

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Show Collection Details in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell – Part 3: The Maintenance Windows

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This week another addition to my series about showing the Collection Details, of a device, via a PowerShell form. This week I added another new tab, with more new information! This new tab show all the information about all the Maintenance Windows that affect the device. Collection Details Form This script creates a nice form to show Collection Details of the specified device. At this moment it shows all of the following information about the collections (of which the device is a member): Tab – Deployments The Name of the Collections, of which the device is a member.  The Name of the targeted Deployments. The State of the targeted Deployments. The Type of the targeted Deployments. Tab – Variables The Name of the Collections, of …

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Show Collection Details in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell – Part 2: The Collection Variables

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In my previous post I started a new series about showing the Collection Details of a device via a PowerShell form. This week I did some changes to the look-and-feel and added a new tab, with new information!. This new tab show all the information about all Collection Variables that affect the device. Show Collection Details Form This script creates a nice form to show Collection Details of the specified device. At this moment it shows all of the following information about the collections (of which the device is a member): Tab – Deployments The Name of the Collections, of which the device is a member.  The Name of the targeted Deployments. The State of the targeted Deployments. The Type of the targeted Deployments. (NEW!) …

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Show Collection Details in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell – Part 1: The Deployments

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In my previous post I started with creating a new PowerShell form to show the Collection Membership of a device. Last week I decided that I wanted to do more with it, so I putted it into a new “project” and form. From now on it’s called Collection Details, as that’s what it’s going to show, starting this week with the targeted Deployments. The coming weeks there will be additional parts, to this post and this “project”, with more and more information to be added to the Collection Details. So what can we all expect from the Collection Details? Well, we all know the Collection Properties per collection, the Collection Details will show a lot of those properties (and more) on a device level. In …

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Right-Click Option: Showing the Collection Membership of a Resource in ConfigMgr 2012 via PowerShell

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Last week someone triggered me that it wasn’t possible to ‘just’ see all the collections that a device is a member of. The only thing I could show, and tell, him, at that moment, was the Deployments –tab in the Properties of the device. The problem with this is that it only show the collections, of which the device is a member, with a deployment targeted. So it misses all the collections, either without an deployment targeted, or with client/ antimalware settings targeted. This triggered me to create a small PowerShell script to show the Collection Membership of a specific device in a nice form. Show Collection Membership Form This script creates a nice form to show the Collection Membership of the specified device. It …

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Quickly catch Active Directory Group Membership changes in ConfigMgr 2012

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This week my post will be about catching Active Directory Group Membership changes. I choose this subject, because I still see and get questions about how long does it take before a group membership change is active in a collection. The short answer would be, based on default settings, between 1 till 10 minutes. In the rest of this post I will show a longer answer on why it’s like that. The main reasons are that the Delta Discovery and the Incremental Updates are working now. Configuration The most important part to quickly catch Active Directory Group Membership changes, is a good configuration. For that two configurations are very important, the Active Directory Group Discovery and the collection settings. To show how, and how fast, …

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