SMSworks

Planning to use Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) forcompletely unattended software installation? Consider CompuThoughts' SMSworks.SMSworks addresses problems, such as multiple-client configurations, that aremagnified when you distribute software in a large-scale (i.e., more than 1000clients) Windows NT Workstation environment. SMSworks lets you install a programon a target computer without any end-user interaction and logs all errors andwarnings to the Windows NT Event Log. The product supports an extensivescripting language that lets you apply advanced logic. This support lets youwrite only one script to accommodate many different client configurations, andyou can still distribute your software to various workstations using one SMSjob.

SMSworks offers full support for the Registry. Every time you install apackage, the software records the appropriate information in the Registry.Through this process, SMSworks guards against you accidentally overwriting yourcurrent software with older versions of the same software.

SMSworks makes an important distinction between system installation anduser installation. When you install a program from the SMS Package Manager,SMSworks can invoke system-specific options. At the client, SMSworks can invokeuser-specific actions when a user runs the application. This distinction betweensystem installation and user installation provides support not available instandard SMS.

SMSworks provides enhancements to the Setup Table File (STF) languagepopularized by Microsoft. SMSworks provides many STFs for products that don'thave them. Using these files, you can perform unattended software installationsthat otherwise would not be possible. SMSworks also provides an STF generatorfor unsupported products and in-house products so that administrators caninstall homegrown software the same way they install commercial packages. If youare using SMS for large-scale software distribution, consider including SMSworksin your bag of SMS tricks.