Don’t Forget the Little Features

Configuration Manager 2007 contains a whole host of new and exciting features designed to make administering computers in your organization easier than ever. However, hidden amongst all of these new features are some incremental improvements to features from SMS 2003 that really add value to the product. In this post, we’ll look at a great new addition to software metering.

In SMS 2003, the question was often asked “Can I automatically generate software metering rules for all of my applications?” Well, in Configuration Manager 2007, you can now do this easily.

If you’ve been using Configuration Manager for a while, you might have noticed software metering rules start to appear under the Software Metering node of the Configuration Manager console. This is happening because Configuration Manager 2007 automatically creates software metering rules for applications that are used on more than ten percent of computers in your site, up to a maximum of one hundred rules.

You can, of course change these default values although it’s not immediately obvious how you accomplish this in the Configuration Manager console.

Hidden away under the Software Metering node, you’ll find the Software Metering Properties dialog box. To open this dialog box, right-click the Software Metering node and then click Properties. Change the default values as you see fit and then click OK to save these values and close the dialog box.

This new feature is made possible because Configuration Manager now collects information on recently used applications as part of the hardware inventory process. You can see this data in Resource Explorer and also use it to create queries and collections using the new attribute class Recently Used Applications.

It’s important to note that automatically generated software metering rules are not enabled by default. If you wish to use any of these rules then right-click the rule in the Software Metering node of the Configuration Manager console and click Enable.

For more information about software metering in Configuration Manager 2007, see Software Metering in Configuration Manager.

Before you go diving into Configuration Manager 2007, take the time to have a read of the topic What’s New in Configuration Manager 2007 in the Configuration Manager library to familiarize yourself with the new functionality offered in the product. There’s a lot of good new stuff in there!

- Rob Stack

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties and confers no rights.