Quick way for an onsite tech to tell a workstations status?

Usage and Config Patch
1

(imported topic written by ktm_200091)

Hi All,

I’ve had a few complaints from my desktop team that Big Fix takes a long time to patch and they can’t tell what is going on. It seems that most times when they are complaining the PC is waiting for a reboot and they either snoozed the restart pop-up or in smaller cases the restart pop-up did not pop-up.

Is there a way to easily see what the status of the client is other than reading the log file:

C:\Program Files\BigFix Enterprise\BES Client__BESData__Global\Logs

Ideally info contained would have:

Patches Needed

reboot state

Admin login needed

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey ktm,

I guess I am not clear on the problem… If the user is snoozing the restart, isn’t that because you selected the “allow user to postpone” action option? Is that considered a problem?

But if your question is: “How can you see status of the system from the local computer?”, then the answer is the BigFix Client Dashboard… The idea with the client dashboard is that you can have the little BigFix icon in the system tray and you can customize a view for the user (or for the technician with a secret key stroke) that will display whatever info you want.

The only trick is that you will need to customize your dashboard and deploy to your agents…

Here is some more info (with examples):

http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?pid=5261#p5261

Here is some more info on where the files live for the client ui dashboard:

http://support.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/kbdirect.pl?id=524

Ben

3

(imported comment written by ktm_200091)

The later is what I am looking for, thanks!!!

4

(imported comment written by ktm_200091)

tried it out… Good stuff

What method does one use to customize the content?? is this just relevance lanquage put into html? so could I test the relevance with the QNA tool and then put it into the .html file?

5

(imported comment written by NoahSalzman)

Yes, it’s just tags inside of HTML.

Check out “Creating Client Dashboards” on page 60 of the Admin Guide.

http://support.bigfix.com/product/documents/BESAdminGuide-7.0.pdf

6

(imported comment written by ktm_200091)

Need some help with the relevance in the Dashboard.html file. Is there any documentation of how to write the language??

I’d like to integrate some of the analysis I put together to monitor workstations on the dashboard so the tech only has to goto one place to view the pc status.

Here is an analysis I use to monitor Symantec:

if exists service “Symantec Antivirus” then state of service “Symantec Antivirus” else “”

Here’s what I have so far trying to copy the style of existing if then else statement

Symantec Antivirus State: <?relevance (if exists service "Symantec Antivirus" then state of service "Symantec Antivirus" else "")?>

Can the dasboard evaluate this info?

7

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Yep… It looks right to me… So put that in the _Dashboard.html file, put it in the right place (according to the KB article) and restart the agent (you always need to restart the agent to see the updated dashboard file)… You will probably want to enable the dashboard to always show the icon with the Tasks in the BES Support site to make it easy for the users to click on them…

Ben

8

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

On a related note… I want to use Javascript in my Dashboard file, however the EvaluateRelevance function is not available resulting in an Object Expected error.

Is there any way I can manually include that function. I searched but couldn’t find a .js file that defines that function anywhere within the standard client installation, but I see it used all of the time, so I must be missing something.

9

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi jfry,

Yes… I believe you can’t use EvaluateRelevance in a client dashboard (only in a console dashboard)…

Will you guys post a screenshot of your client dashboards? I am curious what you came up with…

Ben

10

(imported comment written by ktm_200091)

Here’s the text with userid/computernames deleted

Computername

(Last updated: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:45:43 -0400)

Refresh

Computer Information

OS: WinXP 5.1.2600

RAM: 3070 MB

DNS Name: Computername

Disk Free Space: 18001 MB

Logged in users: Username

Does PC require a Restart? False

Does PC required an Administrative Login? False

Is Group Policy Applying Correctly?: True

Symantec Antivirus Service State: Running

Symantec Antivirus Virus Definition Date: 20090812

Does This PC have the Courion Client Installed?: True

Is Courion Registered Properly? (If Result is False the PC Requires a Reboot): True

Pointsec Protector Service Status: Running

Does PC require Pointsec Whole Disk?: True

Pointsec Whole Disk Service Status: Running

This PC is requires 2 fixlets

Fixlet Name Severity Release Date

Java Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 20 Available 04 Aug 2009

Java Runtime Environment 6 Update 15 Available (JRE < 6 Installed) 04 Aug 2009

Note:Not all of the items reporting in as required have been released for installation, Please ignore Fixletes for

(IE7,IE8, Java 1.50 Update 19, Java 1.6 Update 14)

11

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Cool! Glad to see you are getting good use from this feature…