App Portal/App Broker and SCCM Deployments

[PBolles]

Is there a way or report to look at the package deployment settings on catalog Items for a large number of Catalog items in App Portal to be able to compare to the deployment settings in SCCM?

[CharlesW · Accepted solution]

The deployment settings chosen when creating a catalog item are not stored in the App Portal DB in any meaningful way.. When you select these deployment settings in the UI, a binary string is built and then passed to SCCM when creating a deployment (a WMI Call made by the ESD Web service).. You can see the values that were passed to SCCM by looking at the Parameters column in WD_SiteToAdvert. As mentioned, I don't believe that you will find anything meaningful in these values, and I have no way to tell you how to decipher the values.

[CharlesW · Accepted solution]

The deployment settings chosen when creating a catalog item are not stored in the App Portal DB in any meaningful way.. When you select these deployment settings in the UI, a binary string is built and then passed to SCCM when creating a deployment (a WMI Call made by the ESD Web service).. You can see the values that were passed to SCCM by looking at the Parameters column in WD_SiteToAdvert. As mentioned, I don't believe that you will find anything meaningful in these values, and I have no way to tell you how to decipher the values.

[jdempsey · Accepted solution]

To add to Charlie's post, let me see if I can help decipher something meaningful out of those numeric strings.  First, let me start by saying that this information only applies to Package/Program catalog items.  I'll post an update if/when I have more information on Application catalog items.

If you look at the Parameters column in the WD_SiteToAdvert table, you should see two values labeled as AdvertFlag and DPFlag.  In my test environment, I have one with AdvertFlag=36831264 and DPFlag=2128.  Now if you look at the ConfigMgr 2007 SDK at the SMS_Advertisement Server WMI Class reference, you'll see that it references AdvertFlags and RemoteClientFlags.  These are hexadecimal sums that are composed of one or more hexadecimal flag values added together.  If you convert the App Portal AdvertFlag value from decimal to hexadecimal, you'll find that this corresponds to the ConfigMgr AdvertFlags value.  Likewise, if you convert the App Portal DPFlag value from decimal to hexadecimal, you'll find that this corresponds to the ConfigMgr RemoteClientFlags value.  Here's how that would break down for the example in my environment:

AdvertFlag = 36831264 (0x2320020)

0x02000000 - NO_DISPLAY. The user should not run programs independently of the assignment.

0x00100000 - OVERRIDE_SERVICE_WINDOWS. Override maintenance windows in announcing the advertisement to the user.

0x00200000 - REBOOT_OUTSIDE_OF_SERVICE_WINDOWS. Reboot outside of maintenance windows.

0x00020000 - DONOT_FALLBACK. Do not fall back to unprotected distribution points.

0x00000020 - IMMEDIATE. Announce the advertisement to the user immediately.



DPFlag = 2128 (0x850)

0x00000800 - RERUN_ALWAYS. Always rerun the program.

0x00000010 - DOWNLOAD_FROM_LOCAL_DISPPOINT. Download the program from the local distribution point.

0x00000040 - DOWNLOAD_FROM_REMOTE_DISPPOINT. Download the program from the remote distribution point.