I know there is a fixlet to hide the icon from Start Menu but is there a way to hide it during installation, perhaps by command line argument or clientsetting.cfg? I have looked around and could not find an answer to this.
Similarly it be nice to also have an option to NOT have them visible in Control Panel\Add, remove programs and Start Menu\Programs & Features. I have fixlets for these but a one stop solution for both would be great.
Thx
There is a built in fixlet for this: Hide BES Clients from the Add/Remove Programs List - BES Client >= 8.0
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
Can you provide an example screenshot?
Do you mean the tray icon?
You can hide the BigFix Self Service Offers Tray Icon, but by default it should only appear if there is a relevant offer available for the user to select within it. See: BES Client Setting: Client UI Tray Mode Selection
I’m noticing that I don’t think all options for _BESClient_ActionManager_TrayMode are documented in the fixlet or in the list of BigFix client settings. There is also an option for NoTray but this isn’t recommended since by default it should only appear if there are offers for the user to select, so only do this if you wish to disable BigFix Self Service Offers entirely on a specific system or set of systems.
This is also missing from the doc: _BESClient_ActionManager_HasMainDialog
Setting _BESClient_ActionManager_HasMainDialog to 0 and _BESClient_ActionManager_TrayMode to NoTray and _BESClient_ActionManager_UIEnableMode to none should disable most BigFix UI, but there might be something a bit less aggressive that might be better for most cases.
It does sound like you are describing a strange non-default settings for BigFix. If you could provide the _BESClient_ settings for an example client with this behavior then I might be able to better tell what is present that shouldn’t be or what is missing. (Please redact server / relay FQDNs and IPs)
Thx for your reply.
It would be nice to have the installation of the agent give you an option to hide the IBM BigFix icon from Start Menu, the “IBM BigFix Client” name from add/remove programs and also “IBM BigFix Client” name from the Apps & Features so that there is not a need to deploy these fixlets as a policy.
I am not referring to the self service tray icon but those visible in Start Menu etc.
It would be great if there WAS a clientsetting.cfg setting to do all this.
but what is wrong with doing this as a policy action after the fact? If you do it as a policy action, then not only should it get addressed very quickly after bigfix install, but then it would also ensure that this configuration is kept after every update or even if manually reinstalled.
Another secondary benefit of doing it through a policy action is that BigFix will only be hidden if it is working, while if BigFix is installed and for some reason isn’t able to contact a relay (like if the agent was installed on a home device without a clientsettings.cfg) then it will show up until it starts working, which could be useful for troubleshooting it.
You CAN delete some of these things out of the MSI by editing it if you wish.
That isn’t strictly possible because the client can’t make those changes itself without an action. It isn’t the client itself that puts these things in place, but the installer itself that does it.
There are good reasons to do these things for security agents, BUT it is kind of a violation of the standard of how apps are installed and presented in Windows.