Windows 7 Offer icon

(imported topic written by gmc91)

When using the “Offer” option for an Action, the “BigFix Enterprise Suite Client User Interface” icon appears in the Windows 7 notification area for less than a minute before it is moved to the “overflow area”. I can then use the Customize GUI option to set this icon to “show icon and notifications” and then it stays visible until there are no active offers.

I have been trying to figure out if there is a method to set this option in the registry to force this behavior on these clients programmatically. I tried using the Change how the BES Client “system tray icon” behaves option described in http://support.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/kbdirect.pl?id=441 setting my client to “OffersTray” but that did not change this behavior.

One clue sent me to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify but that did not provide an intuitive solution.

Anyone have a solution idea?

Thank you, Gary

(imported comment written by Lee Wei)

Hi Gary,

I spent some time on the web searching for a programmatic way to change the behavior of the Windows 7 notification area.

But like yourself, I don’t seem to be able to find a way to do it.

Looks like Microsoft is really leaving this to the preference of the enduser…

Lee Wei

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Looks like there is a group policy called “Turn off notification area cleanup” that may do what you want. I haven’t looked into what it sets in the registry, but it could most likely be set via bigfix.

Details of the policy:

This setting affects the notification area, also called the "system tray."
 
The notification area is located in the task bar, generally at the bottom of the screen, and it includes the clock and current notifications. This setting determines whether the items are always expanded or always collapsed. By default, notifications are collapsed. The notification cleanup << icon can be referred to as the "notification chevron."
 
If you enable this setting, the system notification area expands to show all of the notifications that use this area.
 
If you disable this setting, the system notification area will always collapse notifications.
 
If you do not configure it, the user can choose if they want notifications collapsed.

Links:

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-7/hide-the-taskbar-notification-area/