Extending the SCCM console with basic tools

Remember back in the SMS 2003 days we had nice tools that enabled right-click on computers/collections to ping/force policy refresh etc. You will find that now extending the SCCM console is easier. It all comes down to an XML file placed in a proper folder. We can soon expect many extensions (also those from SMS) to be ported to SCCM console. As an example a ping extension for computers from SCCM console.

Create a file called e.g. PingWorkstation.xml:

<ActionDescription Class=”Group” DisplayName=”SMS Tools” MnemonicDisplayName=”SMS Tools” Description=”SMS tools for agent” SqmDataPoint=”53″>
<ActionGroups>
<ActionDescription Class=”Executable” DisplayName=”Ping Workstation” MnemonicDisplayName=”Ping Workstation” Description=”Will ping a workstation”>
<Executable>
<FilePath>cmd.exe</FilePath>
<Parameters> /k Ping ##SUB:NetBIOSName##</Parameters>
</Executable>
</ActionDescription>
</ActionGroups>
</ActionDescription>

Place the file in c:Program FilesSCCM2007AdminUIXmlStorageExtensionsActions7ba8bf44-2344-4035-bdb4-16630291dcf6 and restart the console. The GUID is reference to the resource object in collections. A collection would have these GUIDs:

dbb315c3-1d8b-4e6a-a7b1-db8246890f59 - top level collection
fa922e1a-6add-477f-b70e-9a164f3b11a2 – subcollections

The GUID referring to the SCCM resource object. Additional extensions can be made with the use of SDK documentation in a similar fashion. SDK is now in December CTP available on https://connect.microsoft.com/availableconnections.aspx site (look for SCCM SDK beta – you need to sign in with a live account). RTM should appear somewhere this quater.

This tip was made by Andrzej here.