ConfigMgr/SCCM EXE App Deployment

in this video i'm going to show you how you can create an exe based application deployment type in configuration manager step by step and i'm going to use visual studio code as an example so the basics you're going to learn in this video you can apply those basics on any exe based application so hands-on is highly recommended so if you have not set up your own lab you can set up your own lab today by following my youtube playlist which is available on my channel so i will leave the direct link for you in the description of this video and on the top right hand corner in the card so click on the card you will see this youtube playlist there so where i have demonstrated step by step installation of configuration manager apart from this i have also written a blog if you like reading anything i'm going to cover is available in create application in configuration manager and deploy app and distribute its content in configuration manager so check out these blog posts and i will leave those links in the description as well hello it pros this is jay singh welcome to my channel tech next solutions follow me on twitter at this is jay singh and if you're new to this channel hit the subscribe button and click on the bell icon as well to get all the latest updates and news from this channel i have an announcement to make i have created a discord server so you can meet with like-minded people here you can ask questions and you can help others as well so link you will find in the description as well so that's an invite link if you click on it and you can join this discord server all right so let's talk about the prerequisites for this video so the very first one is make sure your site status if you go to monitoring in configuration manager console and then go to system status and then site status make sure your site status is healthy and second thing you need windows 10 computer or it can be a virtual machine or it can be a physical computer like in my case i am using a physical computer so here i am going to test visual studio code installation and uninstallation as well it might be one time or maybe you have to test it out multiple times or you can use windows sandbox feature as well if that is enabled on your computer so last but not least make sure you have tested out msi based deployment first so msi deployment type is slightly easier so make sure you have tested out so if you have not tested out make sure you go ahead and try that first i have also done a video on msi based deployment which is available on my channel i will leave that link in the top right hand corner in the card as well for you so it is application deployment through software center that's msi based deployment type all right so i'll go back to my management computer so this is the computer which i'm using as a management computer so name of this computer is acer-01 and here i'm going to download visual studio code so open your favorite browser and go to this website which is code.visualstudio.com and you will see this page click on the down arrow and then click on other downloads so we are going to download a specific version which is system installer so that's a system installer this exe file it will install visual studio code for the system and we are interested in 64-bit so click on that it will download 64-bit so i have already downloaded that so if i go to downloads in my file explorer you can see that file is there so once you have downloaded the file so the next step is to figure out where to get help so help we need for the switches so every every exe file to install it silently or uninstall silently you need to figure out switches so to figure out switches you need to know where to look for the help so in some cases you might find the help usually shipped with the exe file and in other cases for example in this uh example for iview there is no help file shipped with it so let's open visual studio code this location in powershell so i will click on file open windows powershell as administrator and i will say yes here so i made the font really big so it will be nice and clear here so if i do ls in downloads folder you can see i have visual studio code and iview so let's differentiate what help is shipped with visual studio code and other file if i do vs code and then hit tab space forward slash question mark hit enter and you will see this help here i will click ok to close it and if i do i view a tab forward slash question mark and hit enter there is no help file okay so this is how you can see if there is any help file there or not if help file is not available you might have to go to the official website and look for any documentation available for this example i went to this website ifanview.com and here i clicked on faq and then i looked up control f for silent and then how can i silently install uninstall and then help is here so all the switches silent switches here with the examples so this is how you figure out the switches what you need so let's go back to powershell here so i'm going to clear this and i will do vs code hit tab space forward slash question mark and then hit enter so we are interested in silent install so we are going to test silent install and then silent uninstall so to keep all the switches i'm going to open notepad and then in notepad i'm going to create three sections so one is silent install and the second is silent uninstall and third is detection method so we will discuss more about detection method shortly so for silent install we would like to silent install so there's a switch called the very silent and i am going to pick that switch which is listed here the third one which is very silent so that switch i'm gonna make a note and the other switch i might be interested in or restart so which means when it will install visual studio code it won't restart the system so and also other thing is so please visit here so this is a link given here for detailed information so you can't really copy this link so i have to type this link here so that i can see the detailed information here so let's go back so we have very silent and no restart switches so i'm going to copy these switches and let's test installation of visual studio code so vs code and make sure it's exe space and then paste those switches here very silent and no restart and hit enter okay i will open programs and features so i will do app vis.cpl so this will open programs and features so here we will see visual studio chord shortly let's see okay so i will refresh that and you can see that visual studio code is there and one thing i have noticed it auto starts after installation so we might have to fix that somehow in a switch so that we will look soon so right now we have a switch for installation which installs however it auto reads starts so we will fix that soon and now we are going to look at silent uninstall method to silently uninstall first of all we have to find where this is installed so i go to this pc windows c it is a 64-bit program so it is installed in program files and here microsoft visual studio code and here you can see that there's a file called uninstall zero dot exe so this file we will use to uninstall so part of the procedure you have to figure out which file it actually uses to uninstall the app so for visual studio code it uses this file to uninstall visual studio code so here we are going to open powershell on this location as administrator i will say yes here and i will bring this in the center so we will type un hit tab tab make sure exe is selected and i'm going to paste very silent and no restart command here as well so i will hit enter and we will keep an eye on it and we will see that it will be vanished from programs and features and also it will be vanished from program files as well that folder which was visual studio code microsoft vs code so this was the location of the file and that's the file name and these are the switches we have used so i'm going to copy that and here i am going to paste in silent uninstall so i'm going to fix this so see this error thing i'm going to remove that and i will remove dot as well so this is all nicely which is c program files visual studio code u n ins triple zero dot exe and i will put double cards here double quotes here as well we have figured out silent uninstall this is finalized it works pretty well so now silent install we want to make sure that it should not auto run after install okay so i have looked up in the detailed help there's nothing mentioned about stopping it from auto starting after installation so i had to do a bit of research and i figured out here there's a switch we can use merge tasks with the run code we can copy that now if you search here control f with run code you won't find anything here so there's nothing mentioned here so i will go back to our notepad and i'm going to put this switch here so i will copy the whole thing and we will go back to downloads folder and file windows powershell i will run it here as administrator and here we will type again vs hit tab space and those switches and hit enter and we will see in programs and features all right let's refresh here so we can see that visual studio code is there but it did not auto run this one is the help file it was already open i can close this so it actually worked so our switches they do look like this very silent no restart merge tasks our silent uninstall looks like this now the detection method so how we gonna detect that visual studio code is installed on the system so we have seen that when we removed visual studio code and in windows c we have program files this folder was vanished which is microsoft vs code so we can use this folder as our detection method but this is ambiguous it won't tell us what version is there or anything like that so we have to go more granular to do that we will go within this folder and there's a file called code.exe so if you're deploying any other application you have to figure out what file you can pick so if i go to properties of this file and here in details you can see file version 155.0.0 so this is very specific to this version so we are going to use code.exe file to detect that app and it should match the file version which is 1.55.0.0 so here we are going to make two sections or maybe three so one is path and then file name and then the last one is version so the path is program files ms vs code let's copy that so that's the path and file name is code.exe and version is 1.55.0.0 all right so this looks good make sure there's no typo if there's any typo obviously we will see errors however i will show you which log you should check out all right so this looks good so we have silent install uninstall and detection method so before we create that app we have to make sure that app is actually available on the file share so i'm going to move over this exe file which sits in the downloads folder i'm going to copy that and i will put this file onto the file share so here i will browse to the file share which is technex dash fs01 and it sits in content source dollar here we have a folder applications i'm going to create another folder i will call it vs space code 0 1 and in here i will paste this exe file all right so once the file is ready i will open configuration manager console and here in the workspace software library and then we go to application management and then applications in the blank space i will right click and then select create application so here by default it will go to msi but we want to select manually specify the application information so select that click next and name i will call it vs code and administrator comments you can leave some comments here this is all internal so the name is internal as well so in general information page some information will be posted to the user as well so publisher will be posted to the user so i will call it microsoft version software version 155.0 and administrative categories i will just select tools you can create a new one here if you like and date published will be seen by the user as well and the rest i'm gonna keep as it is click next and software center information so localized application name this is what user will see you can change that here so user categories i will pick tools and you can create a new one here or you can rename the existing category and delete as well so i will click ok and you can update these three fields here as well if you like localized description so that's some sort of description you give users about the application so usually what i do i go to the home page somewhere you find some information on the home page if there's none available let's check the docs and there you go so there's some information on the docs i'm going to grab up to here and i will paste here in the application localized information and this dot so keywords is when user will look up this application on software center so if i do code comma coding comma visual comma studio so any word they will search they will see vs code come up i will just say vs as well in this so icon you can prepare your icon and put it nicely there so that users when they look up in the application in software center so they will see the icon so i have prepared an icon earlier which is here all right it looks good i'm going to click next here software deployment type you can create a type here but we are going to create deployment type later i will show you how to create that later so if i click on add and you can create deployment type this will confuse you so this is why i won't create the deployment type in this visit so i will click here cancel and we can continue with our application creation visit so click next and summary here click next you'll see the progress and then we are going to close it once this finishes close and if i go back to configuration manager console you can see vs code is listed here and if you compare vs code with 7-zip you can see there's a deployment type 7-zip has and deployments it has two deployments and status is active which is good active here as well so now we are going to create a deployment type so the deployment type it actually decides if it's um exe based application script installer msi or what type of install we are going to do so right click on visual studio code go to properties and then we will go to deployment types so diploma types is here here we are going to add a deployment type so click on add in the visit we will change to script installer so there is no specifically exe installer or exe option so we will select script installer and then click next so general information this is all for admins so i will say vs code underscore exe you can add some comments language i will pick english i will click ok click next so content so we have to browse to the file share where we have placed content in applications vs code zero one select folder and installation program so here we have to tell how to install the program so we have prepared some switches earlier so we will click on browse and then we will select the application from vs code this is the file share and select the application click open just watch this carefully so it has placed the name of the application with double quotes and then there should be a space and we will paste our switches will copy and paste our switches here so make sure there is no typo if there is any we will have problems with the installation and installation starting that's fine we can leave it blank uninstall program so we can click on browse and then we have to browse to the uninstall file so you might not be working on the computer which has visual studio code already installed so this is why we have prepared this here silent uninstall so it will go to c program files microsoft vs code look for this app and then it will use those switches so we can copy this and we can directly paste there however before we do that i would like to eliminate one thing so in most cases 99 cases you have windows installed on c drive just in case if windows is not installed on c drive so it will fail it won't uninstall the app so for that you can use a variable so it is percentage program files percentage all right so if i click ok on that you can see that this will open see program files so that variable we are going to use here so i'm going to remove this and then i will put program files here with percentage signs to start with and finishes off with percentage sign as well so i will select the whole thing copy and i will go back here i can paste here again make sure there's no typo if there's any typo you will see the uninstallation will fail however i will show you how to check that as well so uninstall start in leave it as it is and this one here run installation and uninstall program as 32 bit process on 64-bit clients undo that make sure this is unchecked because this is not a 32-bit program this is already a 64-bit program however if your exe file is 32-bit and you're trying to install on 64-bit system yes definitely you will check that but microsoft vs code the app we downloaded is a 64-bit app all right it looks good so we will click next on it detection method so here we are going to add our detection method which we prepared earlier as well so this is the detection method we prepared so here we will click on add close you can add file system registry windows installer here we are going to add file system type file path we will enter the path here so even the path we can see c program files so we can change this path to percentage program files percentage all right so we can copy this and we can paste it here and file our folder name is code.exe and see here there's another checkbox this file or folder is associated with a 32-bit application undo that that's not right because this application is a 64-bit app and here we will select this option date modified we will change it to version equals 1.55.0.0 so let's have a look 155.0.0 okay looks good and also here with the path you can also browse the path so you can connect to a remote computer or you can look on the local computer if the program is installed for example if we go here so a program is installed on this management computer so i will go to program files and we will go to visual studio code and you have to select the app and then click on okay so let's see if it changes anything so this is what we have entered and i will put this on the side and i will click on ok you can see that all information is entered correctly otherwise it would change if there's a mistake or anything so this is how you can browse that as well i have accidentally clicked here so i want to make sure that the file system setting must satisfy version equals this so that looks good i will click on ok here so if there's any mistake you have made you can always come back and fix that mistake but for that you have to check the logs which i'm going to show you soon so this is good click next and user experience install behavior is installed for system user is locked or not so this again you have to test this some apps they want user to be logged in so program visibility i'm gonna make it hidden and maximum run time 30 minutes estimated time this is what user will see so i'm going to say five minutes so it usually takes two to three minutes and i will click next requirements you can update here you can add if it's like windows 10 64-bit so i'm not going to change anything for now i'm going to click next here dependencies there is none click next you'll see summary next here and click on close so this is ready hit apply here so this looks good click ok all right so now we have a deployment type next step is distributing its content so i will right click here on the app and there's an option to distribute content here i will select that so i will click next here and the content visual studio code application next and uh destination so i will add a distribution point so i have a distribution point in your case you could have a point group as well so you can click on it and select your group if available in my case i don't have that and i will select next here next and then progress we will close that so we can monitor the content when you select the app and in the details pane here it says targeted zero you should see targeted one let's refresh the page so here we can see targeted one so if we can see content status click on that you would see this page here a source version you can see one all right and there's a log you can check this log is on configuration manager server so in my case it's in teknex cm01 here we will go to sms tk4 which is the site code and we will go to logs and then in logs we will look for dist mgr dot log i will open with the configuration manager trace log tool and i will show you you will see this at the bottom of the log all right so the log is still loading all right so here you can see that there's no errors and the package is tk4 triple 003 tk4 triple zero double three so this is all distributed fine without any issues however if there's a problem you would see errors here so that looks good let's go back to our application in software library some visual studio code and now we are going to deploy this application to a computer collection you can deploy to user collection or computer collection in this example i'm going to deploy it to a computer collection if you go to assets and compliance and here i have technex management computers device collection in device collection i'll go to technics computers techniques management computers i have two devices here acer01 which is currently unlocked in and so 002 that's another computer where we are going to test the installation and uninstallation let's go back to software library and we will go back to visual studio code right click and we are going to deploy it so here in the deployment wizard we will select collection click on browse and then i will change it to device collection techniques computers techniques management computers click ok and automatically distribute content for dependencies so in the deployment visit you can also distribute content however we have already distributed content so we don't have to redistribute content so here i'm going to select next content you can see it's already available on distribution point if not you can add that content here from this option so i will click next deployment settings action install purpose available you can make it required but we are going to make it available only and i'm not going to change anything here click next scheduling you can change it i'm going to leave it default which is available asap and then click next user experience not going to change anything here next and then next in the summary you'll see what information you have selected click next and then progress we will close it all right so now this application has a deployment type and has a deployment as well so in the details pane if you change over to deployments you can see that it is deployed to teknex management computers so in technics management computers i have acer 02 and i'm going to connect to acer02 so which is right here you can see this is acer02 i will open software center here so you might have to wait for the policy refresh however we will force it to refresh its policy so i will open configuration manager client properties and in configuration client properties under actions i will click on application deployment evaluation cycle run now and machine policy retrieval run now as well so depends on your network my network is very small so usually the policy will refresh right away so in production you might have to wait couple of minutes let's see how long it will take here there you go visual studio code it showed up right away so if i click on it you can see that it is available for installation status available version date published download size estimated time which we defined five minutes and before we click on install i will open file explorer and we go to windows c and then we will go to windows ccm cache so this is a folder where it's going to download content i'm going to move this on a side and there's a log which you can check if there's any failure for installation and failure for uninstallation so that log actually lives in c drive so we go to this pc c drive windows ccm and then there's a folder called logs so here there's a log which is app enforce right click we will open with cm trace log tool all right so what i'm going to do i'm going to click on install and you will see it will download content here on the right hand side i have clicked on install and you will see status downloading you can see it is downloading content and here on the right hand side you have seen a folder e has created so it's installing and in the log file we can see at 11 54 it is uh it has prepared working directory ccm cache e and then it appropriate command which is this with various islands all the switches we defined and at the bottom performing detection discovered app so here the app is installed and in start menu we can see the app so if you run the app it should run fine there you go so now we are going to test uninstallation so let's see if that works if there's any problem we can always go back and fix it and we can check the log so this log should tell us if there is any potential issue with the uninstallation so i will click on uninstall and we will keep an eye here in the log so it's running and we can see that prepared command line so which is very silent no restart and it went to c program files microsoft vs code uninstall this app and it has uninstalled the app if there's any problem with uninstalling the app it should show detailed information here in the log file so that you can go back to your configuration manager console and troubleshoot if there's any problem whatsoever so that is all for this video if you find this video informative make sure give it a thumbs up and show your support subscribe to my channel click on the bell icon as well to get all the latest updates and news if you have any feedback leave it in the comments box below as well before i go i would also like to remind you that there is a discord server which you can join and on that discord server you can meet with like-minded people and you can ask questions and also you can help others as well so the link to join this discord server you will find in the description of this video all right i will see you in the next video have a good one you

Channel: TekNex Solutions

Views: 2,024

Keywords: exe, app, deployment, sccm, configmgr, memcm, mecm, microsoft, endpoint, configuration, manager, application deployment, distribute, content, teknex, mmdm, masteringmdm, blog.masteringmdm.com, teknex solution, teknex solutions, configuration manager, current branch config manager, system center, config manager, app deployment, software deployment, create application in sccm, sccm application deployment, visual studio code

Id: S04nvZB02vI

Length: 33min 24sec (2004 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021