Running Advertised Programs on Legacy Clients

  • Article

Running advertised programs on the Legacy Client is different from the Advanced Client in the following ways:

  • The Advertised Programs Wizard is used for non-assigned advertised programs.

  • The Advertised Programs Monitor is used for advertised programs after they have been run, started to run, or scheduled to run.

  • Configuring the software distribution agent.

  • Running dependent programs.

  • Viewing properties of advertised programs.

  • Scheduling when an advertised program is run.

Run advertised programs

If the advertised program is set to do so, users are notified of new advertised programs in the notification area. If an advertisement for a program becomes available for a program that was previously advertised to the client and run successfully, the user is again notified in the notification area.

Advertised programs are available in both the Add or Remove Programs and the Run Advertised Programs items in Control Panel except that Microsoft Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 clients do not display advertised programs in Add or Remove Programs.

Advertised Programs Wizard

When an advertised program is available on a Legacy Client, an Advertised Programs icon with the label New Advertised Program(s) are available appears in the client's taskbar notification area.

When a new advertised program is available at the client, the user can use the Advertised Programs Wizard to run the program immediately, or to reschedule the program. To start the Advertised Programs Wizard, the user at the client can do one of the following:

  • Double-click the New advertised programs available icon in the notification area.

  • Right-click the icon and select Run Advertised Program Wizard from the pop-up menu.

  • In Control Panel, double-click Advertised Programs.

When a new advertised program is available, the New advertised programs available icon appears in the user taskbar notification area. When an advertised program runs on the client, the Advertised program running icon appears in the user taskbar notification area. When an advertised program counts down to run on the client, the Advertised program about to run icon appears in the notification area.

Advertised Programs Monitor

The Advertised Programs Monitor helps users perform the following tasks:

  • Monitor program run status.

  • Change configuration options for the Advertised Programs Wizard.

  • View advertised program properties.

To run the Advertised Programs Monitor, the user can perform one of the following at the client:

  • Double-click either the Advertised program about to run icon or Advertised program running icon in the notification area.

  • Right-click the icon in the notification area, and then click Open Advertised Program Monitor from the pop-up menu.

  • Click the Advertised Programs Monitor icon in Control Panel.

The Advertised Programs Monitor displays a list of all scheduled programs, all programs that are currently running, and all programs that have already run at the client. The run status of each program appears in the Scheduled to Run and Last Run columns.

Configuring the software distribution agents on Legacy Clients

When you configure the Advertised Programs Client Agent properties in the SMS Administrator console, you can specify whether users at clients can override the default settings. If you enable users to change the agent settings, users can specify:

  • How often the client checks for new advertised programs.

  • Whether to be notified visually or with an audible prompt when a new advertised program is available.

  • When a scheduled program is about to run, whether a notification message appears, and how long before runtime to display it.

  • Whether and when to play sounds for countdown notifications.

  • Whether to show the status icon on the taskbar for all system activities.

The user can change the Advertised Programs Client Agent settings by selecting System from the Advertised Programs Monitor menu, and then clicking Options.

Viewing properties of advertised programs

To view the properties of an advertised program, the user at the client must do one of the following:

  • Select the program in the Advertised Programs Monitor, right-click the program, and then select Properties.

  • Select the program in the Advertised Programs Monitor. On the menu bar, select Program, and then click Properties.

  • Select the program in the Advertised Programs Wizard and click Properties.

Users can also see advertised program properties from the notification dialog box when the advertised program is ready to run.

Program dependencies

Advertised programs can be set to run another program first. If the other program has already run, then the advertised program proceeds immediately. Otherwise, the other program is automatically run. The exception is if the other program requires that another program be run first, in which case this other program will be run first.

If any of the programs in the list of dependent programs does not run successfully, the sequence of programs after that program is stopped. The programs can be retried at any time.

The user can schedule when an advertised program will be run

After the advertised program has been scheduled to run, the user can see the advertised program in the Advertised Programs Monitor. The user can cancel the scheduled running of the advertised program by selecting it and then clicking Unschedule on the Programs menu.

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