ConfigMgr Admins admit it – you really don’t want non-admins to access the Configuration Manager (SCCM) Admin Console.
And clearly you don’t want anyone to install software manually. So, what do you do?
Luckily there is the Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) feature in Configuration Manager where you can control what users can see, modify, etc.
Yet it’s a time consuming task to setup, and users needing access will need to install the Admin Console on their computer to manage anything.
The list of potential issues goes on from here, as you know. This is one of the reasons we created the Cireson Portal for Configuration Manager (CMP) – to let ConfigMgr Admins allow various IT roles to do their job with ConfigMgr in a browser.
Of course, Admins are more than welcome to use it too, but let’s be frank here; CMP is not an one to one representation of the ConfigMgr Admin Console (yet). Instead, it complements the Console and allows others to perform daily tasks without worry.
The support team of your company may want to do ad-hoc software deployment as one of their daily tasks.
Maybe a user calls in and need a piece of software and the job is just to push that one piece of software to that that single computer the user is using.
This is easily done from CMP, as a wizard guides you through the process. But really, it’s all about picking the software and the computer or user and make it happen.
That’s why we made software deployment even easier in the Cireson Portal for Configuration Manager v2.1.
It can be done this easily:
- Select the software to be deployed
- Select the computer or user to receive the software
- Start deployment
But hey you will say, you will need to target the deployment to a collection, setup deployment options, schedules, etc.
Yes, and you can still do that if you want, but you can use the on-demand collection and deployment creation process in CMP. In fact, the new optional Quick Deployment utilizes this fully.
When you have finished the 3-step wizard and clicked Finish, CMP will:
- Create a collection named as the software and its action, e.g. “Microsoft Visio 2016 Install”
- Create a deployment and attach to that collection
- Add the computer or user to that collection
And yes, if the collection already exists, we will use that and yes, if the deployment already exists, we will use that as well.
If you select a user, it will create a user collection. And no, it is not called the same as the device collection, we will brand it like “Microsoft Visio User Install”.
If you select both users and computers in the wizard we will create both.
You can also select multiple pieces of software and have the process create multiple collections and deployments.
For Quick Deployment, the deployment settings are locked down with the exception of the schedule.
You will setup Deployment Templates specifying all the desired settings and grant access to these to users of CMP.
We still have the standard deployment wizard where you can target collections, manage deployment settings, etc.
In fact, you can enable both standard and quick deployment and let users of CMP decide what to use.
This blog zooms in on the new quick deployment wizard, but Cireson Portal for Configuration Manager is much more than that.
Head over to https://cireson.com/configmgr-portal/ to learn more, try out online, download a free copy of the community edition, or request a fully functional 30-day trial.
Also make sure to check out previous webinars around CMP, Configuration Manager, and other Cireson products at http://vimeo.com/teamcireson
