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I have found some great articles on importing custom fields into ZAM. Some of them had some parts missing, I could not find out how to schedule the scan so I thought I would provide an updated document.

Please see some of the other great articles:

• Scanning eDirectory Data into ZAM - by Art Flores
• Custom ZENworks Asset Management Inventory Attributes - by Jared Jennings

This will give you the 'heads up' on what eDirectory variables to use. I am going to concentrate on First Name, Last Name. E-Mail address, Location and Department.

The Variables for each of them are:

%Given_Name = First Name
%Last_Name = Last Name
%Internet_Email_Address = Internet E-Mail Address
%Telephone_Number = Telephone Number
%OU = Department
%L = Location (Locality)

Make sure that the Users information is up to date in ConsoleOne (These can all be found in the 'General' tab.)

First off create a ZEN app that will push out these as registry settings. I am going to create them in HKLM\Software\XXXX\Desktop

For each of the registry keys you will need to enter the string value as %OU%

Click to view.

Click to view.

Make sure that the item is set to Create Always and tick the Distribute Always box. This ensures that when users login to the workstation the keys are populated each time.

Associate the application to users in the normal way and set to Force Run. (I also set the app to not show progress on distribution, so users won't see anything happening)

Here are the populated keys in the registry:

Click to view.

Now let's get ZAM to use these Reg keys…….

From the ZAM Manager on the server, Login as 'entadmin'.

Create a new Option Set – Management Tab | Right Click Public Collection Option Set and select New | Collection Option Set.

Click to view.

Set 'Run Collection Editor' to Always. (This lets us modify the options we need)

Click the 'Collection Editor' tab:

Click to view.

Tick the 'User Tab' and the 'Workstation Tab' uncheck Inventory and process.

We need to modify the First Name, Last Name, Email and Phone to use the registry keys we created earlier:

Click 'Configure' next to the User Tab:

Click to view.

In the First Name field, under the Default Value column change this to use the Registry Key.

HKLM\Software\XXXX\Desktop\FirstN

Change your Default Value to

%HKEY:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\XXXX\DESKTOP\FIRSTN

(There is only one % at the front of the statement, not at the end)

Make sure you change the 'Auto Fill' option to Always – This then will always fill in the First Name field using the Registry Key.

(I did not add the Edit Mask as Jared suggests in his solution, I found that it works without)

Then Change all the other Fields the same way for Last Name, Email Address and Phone.

Click OK.

Now do the same with the Workstation Tab fields:

Click to view.

I have unchecked all the other fields that I don't want to use. All I am interested in is:

First Name
Last Name
E-Mail Address
Location
Department
Telephone

Most of the other items should be picked up by the normal inventory process.

Don't change anything under the Workstations Tab, unless you just want to assign to specific machines.

Back on the General Tab, Change the 'Run Collection Editor' to 'Never'.

Changing this to never means that the users are never presented with the Collection Editor GUI, the collection editor will still run and collect the information using the Registry Keys that we have created earlier. If you want your users to get the GUI, then change this option. (I would read the documentation on what you would require your users to do, which is out of the scope of this doc.)

Now we need to schedule ZAM to collect this data.

Create a new 'Public Collection Schedule'.

Click to view.

Set the Cycle options to your preferred settings. Here I have set it to Every Day. Scan for one day and only run the scan between 09:00 to 17:00.

Assign the Schedule to the Collection Editor Set we just created:

Click to view.

Select the schedule we just created:

Click to view.

Click OK.

In the main console window | Option Sets tab, you should see the entry for the Collection Editor:

Click to view.

This will now run at the specified time and collect the information and add it to each of the inventory records in the database:

Click to view.

If you want to change the option for the 'Scan Now' to include this Option set, you need to edit the Domain settings and add this to the Scan Now.

Click to view.

Or, to have a complete Inventory scan and collection editor scan, you can modify your existing default scan to include all of the above, so when ZAM performs an inventory scan on the PC it will also collect the eDirectory Data. (If you just have the Collection Editor in the scan now, when you manually scan a machine with the scan now option it will only collect the eDirectory data and not the inventory data to.)

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.