ZENworks Cool Solutions

Webinar - The Novell Integrated Help Desk and Free BrainShare passes for eligible purchases

GroupLink1 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:07:51 -0700

Are you planning on attending BrainShare this year and can't quite get the budget to attend? Are you in need of a help desk that integrates with your Novell environment? GroupLink would like to help you out!

GroupLink's everything HelpDesk solution, the Novell Integrated Help Desk Solution, features critical Novell integration:

- Schedule appointments, tasks and receive email notifications with GroupWise email and calendaring integration
- Manage your assests with NEW! powerful ZEN 10 integration
- Authenticate your users with essential eDirectory integration
- Lower overall costs by leveraging your current Novell technology

If you purchase at least 3 technician licenses of everything HelpDesk before the end of the year, you will receive a free BrainShare pass*. To kick off this great promotion and to learn more about how this solution can benefit your organization we have planned a special webinar. This webinar will feature Angie Veach, from Carrol Consolidated School Corp. She will discuss how this Novell integration has helped her organization be more effective and lower overall costs.

Date: December 3
Time: 11:00 am Eastern
Link: http://www.grouplink.net/redir.asp?id=2009102902

* of for new customers only, cannot be combined with any other promotion or discount.

Cool Solutions

Early Bird Discount: Save $300 on BrainShare

mattclayton — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:31:43 -0700

Novell has taken steps to make BrainShare more affordable by dropping the full price of the conference from US$1,895.00 to US$1,695.00. You can save an additional $300 with the "early bird" registration. The "early bird" rate of US$1,395.00 will be available until February 19, 2010. Learn more at http://www.novell.com/brainshare

Cool Solutions

Heads Up! Novell Pulse Coming Your Way

ssalgy — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:28:47 -0700

Novell just announced the first real-time collaboration platform for the enterprise, called Novell Pulse. Novell and Google jointly announced that they are working together to enable Novell Pulse users and Google Wave users to seamlessly work together across both systems. Novell is the first collaboration provider to integrate Google Wave.

What is Novell Pulse?

Novell Pulse is the first enterprise class, real-time collaboration platform that unites communication, authoring and social messaging tools. Novell Pulse helps drive enterprise productivity and innovation by making it easier to communicate digitally, generate ideas and share information. People continents apart can share and edit documents, jointly browse websites, and have a digital conversation, all in real-time. Individuals can also manage content overload by filtering for people and topics to follow as well as storing files—both native and office type—along with their related groups and conversations.

What can you do with Pulse?
Novell Pulse is an enterprise real-time collaboration solution. Real-time collaboration tools allows people to easily share and work together on documents, have real-time conversations, interact using social media tools, and much more.

Novell Pulse was designed specifically for the enterprise user, so it includes robust security and management capabilities. Novell Pulse will also interoperate with other real-time technologies like Google Wave, as well as existing collaboration solutions.

How would you use it in a business setting?

Communication. Say you have a project that requires input from 5 people. Before Novell Pulse, you would email those 5 people and receive separate responses—some of which would be responding to your email, while others would be responding to other emails from the distribution list, depending on when each was composed. Then you'd have to aggregate all the responses, synthesize them, and begin the cycle of emails all over again.

With Novell Pulse, you send one, synchronous message, and all 5 people can respond to you and each other in real-time. No aggregation, missed information or repetition of efforts—and if you make the conversation public, you may get valuable input from someone you weren't expecting.

Intra- and Inter-company Collaboration. For example, you plan to issue a product datasheet jointly with one of your partners. You work in different document publishing environments such as OpenOffice and MS Word. Before Novell Pulse, you would have written the press release and sent it as an OpenOffice attachment to everyone on your team within your company for input, then aggregated all the input, edited it down for redundancy, and then converted it to MS Word before sending as an attachment to your partner for input. Then you'd begin the cycle again for every round of edits.

With Novell Pulse, you and your partner could simply collaborate on the document in real-time and then both companies could export the document into their preferred format when it's final. This also works seamlessly if you are using Novell Pulse and your partner is using Google Wave.

Breaking Through the Clutter. Information overload is a serious concern for companies today. Users are hit with information from all directions—email, instant messenger, blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, calendars. By unifying all these information mediums into one, easy-to-use interface with folders, filtering and search, Novell Pulse enables users to make sense of it all and focus on what's really important.

Working With Google

This is a technical collaboration between Google and Novell to bring federation to both systems, using the Wave Federation Protocol. We're the first company to show federation using the WFP, and we're the first collaboration solution to integrate with Google Wave. Novell Pulse and Google Wave systems can operate in tandem so that users of the two platforms can work together in real time, each using their preferred tool.

What does federation with Google Wave involve?
Federation involves using a protocol call the Wave Federation Protocol to enable messages (or Waves) to be shared in real-time, character-for-character, as they are being created or edited between two or more separate systems.

The sharing is based on addressing. You place addresses ( which look just like e-mail addresses) from potentially different domains on a message or Wave, then the message is live and any edits made by anyone will be automatically shared in real-time.

How is Novell Pulse different from Google Wave?
The design point for Novell Pulse is the enterprise user, so we've placed a strong emphasis on features such as security and management controls. We've also drawn on our 20+ years experience in the enterprise collaboration space with products like GroupWise, and worked to address enterprise and business use-cases.

Novell Pulse is a key component in Novell’s collaboration strategy and open collaboration architecture, working standalone or in concert with Novell’s broader product portfolio. Novell Pulse is very complementary to Google Wave and to our existing collaboration products such as GroupWise. Key features, which draw on the best of e-mail, instant messaging, document sharing, social connections, real-time co-editing and enterprise controls, include:

Security
Provisioning, sign-on and permissions leverage enterprise identity and access management systems, directory servers and audit tools to integrate with established processes, keep data safe and support compliance requirements.
Real-time collaboration
Collaborative editing and document sharing enables users to get work done with other users in real-time, from co-editable online documents to the ability to share and comment on traditional office documents in real time.
Unified Inbox
A single interface allows users to see, sort and filter all their personal and professional content from various social messaging services, email, Wave, etc. all in one place.
Enterprise social messaging
Social Blog allows users to share, follow and comment on topics and ideas.
Real-time awareness and chat
Allows users to know exactly when their colleagues are available via people, group and message activity monitoring.

Novell Pulse will be available in both cloud and on-premise deployments.

Is Novell Pulse designed for the consumer or the enterprise customers?
Novell Pulse is focused on the enterprise customers. It addresses the needs of a global, knowledge-based workforce and gives enterprises the confidence to embrace real-time collaboration technologies. Novell Pulse leverages Novell's expertise and experience developing enterprise collaboration and communication tools, as well as industry leadership in creating strong identity and security management solutions.

Is Novell Pulse open source?
No.

When will Novell Pulse be available? What will it cost?
Novell Pulse will be generally available in the first half of 2010 in a cloud deployment, and with an on-premise deployment option in a subsequent release. Pricing will be announced at general availability.

How can I get access in when this goes to beta availability?
We'll be announcing that later this year.

Where can I see Novell Pulse in action?
Novell Pulse was demonstrated on Nov. 4, 2009 during the Integrating Google Wave into the Enterprise keynote at Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco. We'll be giving previews of the technology over the coming weeks via Novell blogs and video. Stay tuned. A select beta is scheduled for early 2010.

Where can I get more information about Novell Pulse?
You can find more information at www.novell.com/pulse . We'll be previewing more of Novell Pulse over the coming weeks too.

End-User Computing

BrainShare Jacket Promotion

mattclayton — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Get a free jacket by being one of the first 400 to register for BrainShare 2010 using this registration code: jacket. Sign up and share the news with your friends. The red and gray, athletic jacket is the perfect jacket for the spring weather in Utah. Jackets will be available for pick up at the registration booth on Monday, March 22, 2010.

ZENworks Cool Solutions

Treasure Island: A Deep dive into ZENworks Application Virtualization 7.1

coolguys — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:45:00 -0600

Treasure Island: A Deep dive into ZENworks Application Virtualization 7.1
by Jason Blackett
Novell Connection Magazine - October 2009

Here's an excerpt:

Dealing with software conflicts, incompatibility between software
and OS versions and testing applications in new environments can
create a significant drain on IT resources as well as cut into user
productivity. One of the major causes of application failure is from
application conflicts created by DLL files getting over written and
registry settings being changed as a result of new software
installations. By isolating the application from its underlying
operating system through application virtualization, these problems
can be drastically reduced and, in many cases, completely eliminated.
In fact, industry analysts indicate that by taking advantage of
virtual applications you can realize a 60 percent reduction in costs
associated with testing, packaging and supporting an application.

Key Features
ZENworks Application Virtualization provides the following key features:

Read the article here

Cool Solutions

USERNAME Variable in AdminStudio InstallShield

animalafa — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:31:13 -0600

Getting the Current Windows Username and Using it with InstallShield

Using application objects in ZENworks 7 made it easy to use the current windows users name by putting either the %CN% or %USERNAME% into the registry or ini files as required.

To get a similar result with InstallShield and MSI installs requires some extra work but is still relatively simple.

First thing is that an InstallShield MSI already contains a variable called USERNAME, so that’s easy right, just put [USERNAME] into the setup where needed and the jobs a good one.

Unfortunately not.

InstallShield reads that variable as the username that registered windows when it was first installed – see system properties/General/Registered. This is not generally what we want.

Click to view.

The following steps will set up the app so that it uses the current username in the USERNAME variable.

Open the ISM file (not the MSI) with installshield.
If you haven’t got the ISM file go to the file menu select open and navigate to the MSI file. Then from the open as drop down list select wizard. Go to next and select the option to convert the file to an ISM.
This procedure has to be done with an ISM file as we need installscript and this is not available when editing an MSI.
Select the Installation Designer tab, navigate to the Behaviour and Logic section and select installscript.

Click to view.
Right click Files and Select New Script File.

Click to view.

This will generate setup.rul and MyFunction

Click to view.
Go to the bottom of the MyFunction section and enter the following code.
```
#define TITLE      "GetUsername"
#define ENV_USER "USERNAME" 
// Include Ifx.h for built-in InstallScript function prototypes. 
#include "Ifx.h"
export prototype ExFn_GetEnvVar(HWND); 
function MyFunction(hMSI)   
    // To Do:  Declare local variables. 
    STRING svEnvVar;
begin             
 GetEnvVar (ENV_USER, svEnvVar); 
 MsiSetProperty(hMSI, "USERNAME", svEnvVar); 
end;
```
Click to view.

Just delete or overwrite the skeleton code that’s automatically produced.

For anyone who’s interested the code breaks down as follows
```
#define TITLE      "GetUsername"
```
"This is not actually needed, I use it during testing, I leave it as a quick reference (I know that’s bad but I’m a sysadmin not a programmer)."
```
#define ENV_USER "USERNAME"
```
"This is defines a placeholder for the Windows Environment Variable we want. In this case username – Yes this will work with any Windows Environment Variable."
```
#include "Ifx.h"
```
"Include Ifx.h for built-in InstallScript function prototypes."
```
export prototype ExFn_GetEnvVar(HWND);
```
"The function is external so it needs prototyping (I think that’s right. remember I’m SysAdmin, if you need to know why ask a programmer :)). This line created the other function"
```
function MyFunction(hMSI) 
```
"The function header"
```
    STRING svEnvVar;
```
"This declares a local variable."
```
begin    
```
"This starts the function"
```
GetEnvVar (ENV_USER, svEnvVar);
 
```
"This calls the installshield function GetEnvVar, which gets the Windows Environment variable we want (ENV_USER) and stores it in svEnvVar."
```
MsiSetProperty(hMSI, "USERNAME", svEnvVar); 
 
```
"This calls the installshield function MsiSetProperty, which then stores the svEnvVar data in the INTERNAL installshield USERNAME variable, overwriting the current one."
```
end;
```
"end of function."
Now, still under the Behaviour and Logic Section, Select Custom Actions and Sequences. Right Click Custom Actions and select the custom action wizard

Click to view.
Select next on the wizard welcome screen.
Enter a name on the Basic Information screen and select next.
I’ve entered GetUserName .

Click to view.

Select Run Installscript code from the type dropdown box and select next.

Click to view.

Select the Function from the Source dropdown box, in this case MyFunction, and select next.

Click to view.

Leave the Processing as synchronous and select next

Click to view.

Leave both the execution options on the defaults and select next.

Click to view.

Leave the UI sequence on default and set the Execute Sequence to After Isolate Components. We need this function to run early to ensure that the correct information is in the USERNAME variable. Select Next.

Click to view.

Select Finish and the wizard is done.

The Custom Actions should now look like this.

Click to view.

The variable can now be used and will act as expected, by putting the users name where required.
An example registry edit, using USERNAME. The variable needs to be enclosed in square brackets when used so it’s [USERNAME].

Click to view.
The application then needs to be built as an MSI. If there is already an MSI in the directory it is advisable to copy it elsewhere to ensure there is an original copy to fall back on if needed.
First compile the code for the function that was created, using the toolbar button

If there are any errors then you’ll need to check the code is correct.

Then the MSI can be built using this toolbar button

One final gotcha is that you can’t use this method to rename files. If you try to put a filename in using a variable for all or part of then it will just use that for the file name.

e.g. [SomeVariable].exe within the MSI will be copied to windows as [SomeVariable].exe and not renamed (I hope that makes sense).

If you need to have that functionality there is a RenameFile variable. Which could be used something like this

#define FILENAME1  "SourceFile.exe" 
#define FILENAME2  ".exe" 
#define SOURCE_DIR "C:\\SomeDirectory" 
#define TARGET_DIR "C:\\SomeDirectory" 
#include "ifx.h"
#include "isrt.h"
#include "iswi.h" 
function MyFunction(hMSI)   
    // Declare local variables.
    STRING svName; 
    NUMBER nvSize;
begin 
	// Retrieve the Variable from the MSI database 
    nvSize = 256; 
    MsiGetProperty (hMSI, "USERNAME", svName, nvSize);        
    // Set up system variables for rename operation. 
   SRCDIR    = SOURCE_DIR; 
   TARGETDIR = SOURCE_DIR; 
   // Rename FILENAME1 to FILENAME2. 
   RenameFile (FILENAME1, svName + FILENAME2); 
end;

This example uses the USERNAME variable, but it will work for any variable within the MSI database.

FILENAME1 is the name of the file that wants renaming.

FILENAME2 contains the name or PART of the name that the file needs reaming too.

SOURCE_DIR and TARGET_DIR contain the directory where the file resides. Note the use of \\ in the path, this is required between directories a single \ doesn’t work.

Remember to use a different name for the function if MyFunction already exists.

MsiGetProperty retrieves the variable from the internal MSI database (in this case USERNAME) and stores the value in the svName variable within the function.

SRCDIR and TARGETDIR are set to the directory paths defined earlier.

RenameFile goes to SRCDIR and locates FILENAME1, it then renames it to svName concatenated to FILENAME2 and saves it back to TARGETDIR.

This function manipulates files on the actual windows system, not within the MSI so the files must exist before hand. This means that when setting up a custom action for the function it needs to scheduled towards the end of the installation, after the files have been copied.

Hope all this is useful and maybe eases the migration to ZCM for someone.

Cool Solutions

Need to reset ZPM Proxy configuration in ZCC?

paulpf — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:10:52 -0600

Had an issue where my ZCC Configuration for Patch Management Proxy information in "HTTP Proxy Server Details" wouldn't clear.

ZCM Primary Servers - Windows 2003 Server
ZCM Database - Oracle 10g on a SUN system

Patchlink developer gave a series of commands that were keeping these settings alive.

On the ZCM server running Patch Management open a DOS and run command;
zac sp /clear
Go into %ZENWORKS_HOME%\cache\zmd\settings\PROXY_SETTING.xml,
rename this file.

IF that doesn't clear the proxy settings -

Have Oracle DBA run commands;
Delete from HTTPPROXY;
Commit;

Proxy information for Patch Management in ZCC should be clear to put in new proxy information.

ZENworks Cool Solutions

ZPM License failing to verify in ZCC?

paulpf — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:05:07 -0600

Had an issue where my ZCC Configuration for Patch Management Licenses kept indicating "License Expired".

ZCM Primary Servers - Windows 2003 Server
ZCM Database - Oracle 10g on a SUN system

Finally support got a hold of Patchlink developer and they gave a series of commands that were keeping the system "Verify License" option from working.

Make note of ZPM licensing information (or screenshot page)
NOTE: You will lose all the information on the license page.
Have Oracle DBA run commands;
Delete from License;
Delete from LicenseList;
Commit;
Go to <Zenworks_home>/conf folder
Locate zpm.lic file, save a backup of this file, and then delete zpm.lic file.
Go the License Page and make sure the page has no data
Enter the license key details(saved in step 1, since we deleted it in the first step).
Validate license key again

"Verify License" information should properly connect and verify.

These commands are probably similar to what you would need for an SQL database with the same issue.

Cool Solutions

BrainShare - Flip the Switch

mattclayton — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Here's a link to a great article about some of the changes and modifications we've made for BrainShare 2010. Check it out to see how we've incorporated your feedback to make this year's conference better than ever.

http://www.novell.com/connectionmagazine/2009/10/b...

ZENworks Cool Solutions

The Last Scan History Report

BMcDowell — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:34:51 -0600

The Last Scan History report presents a concise summary of when devices in your inventory were last scanned. The report is built around a best practice of weekly inventory scans, and breaks a week down day-by-day. Devices with more aged inventory are grouped at 30-day breaks.

Click to view.

The customer-favorite Last Scan History report in ZENworks Asset Management 7.5 included the ability to drill into each device count to see the list of machines counted. Improvements to the ZENworks Reporting Server scheduled for the 10.3 release will provide for this feature of the report. Watch for an update to this report in the first calendar quarter of 2010.

Adding this Report to Your ZENworks Reporting Server

Interested in adding this report to your ZENworks Reporting Server? It's easy – simply download and unzip the report file attached to this description and follow the instructions in the ZRS Library article “Importing a ZRS report” article. http://www.novell.com/communities/node/9070/import...

Contacting the ZRS Custom Reports Librarian

Have a question about the ZENworks Reporting Server Custom Reports library? Contact the librarian directly at zrs.community.feedback@novell.com.

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