BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

Kim Oppalfens — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:03:55 GMT

Great blog post, but using the makemodelapplications view is not the best choice IMHO. These view only has your models listed if each model also has an application linked to it.

Which is pretty uncommon to the zti process.

Makemodelsettings on the other hand, makes this more useful for both lti and zti deployments.

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

BenHunter — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:00:28 GMT

Hi Kim, This is just an example. I tend to use both MakeModelSettings and MakeModelApplications. I use MakeModelSettings to set things like display resolutions for a laptop and then I use MakeModelApplications to install applications that are specific to a to a particular model type, for example fingerprint reader drivers. This approach is also very useful for those annoying drivers that must be installed via an EXE or MSI rather than via PnP. I find this approach very common, in fact I use MakeModelApplications a lot more than MakeModelSettings.

I use this approach equally for both ZTI and LTI.

Thanks,

Ben

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

Marcel — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:04:06 GMT

I got a question regarding this. HP can be really annoying with those makes :S. For example I got a nc6320 laptop wich reads out as a "nc6340". The other 6320 says "HP Compaq nc6320 (EY395ET#ABH)". Seems like every HP is different.

Only solution is to make a huge SetModelAlias script which filters all these out I presume?

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

BenHunter — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:15:11 GMT

Yes that is the exact reason why I created this script.

Thanks,

Ben

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

Marcel — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:45:43 GMT

Hewlett-Packard can be so annoying :D

thnx tho I will see what I can do. Worst part is figuring out all the model names of all the pc's.

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

Mark — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:00:02 GMT

Is there something similar to oEnvironment.Item("Model") for the system manufacturer such as oEnvironment.Item("Make") ro oEnvironment.Item("Manufacturer")?

I would like to create something similar to this:

Function SetModelAlias()

Select Case oEnvironment.Item("Make")

Case "IBM", "Lenovo"

SetModelAlias = Left(oEnvironment.Item("Model"),4)

oLogging.CreateEntry "USEREXIT - ModelAlias has been set to " & SetModelAlias, LogTypeInfo

Case "Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.,Ltd."

SetModelAlias = "Toughbook"

oLogging.CreateEntry "USEREXIT - ModelAlias has been set to " & SetModelAlias, LogTypeInfo

Case Else

SetModelAlias = oEnvironment.Item("Model")

oLogging.CreateEntry " USEREXIT - ModelAlias has not been changed." , LogTypeInfo

End Select

End Function

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

BenHunter — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:40:51 GMT

The property oEnvironment.Item("Make") is used to identify this information.

What you might want to do is update your function to return two aliases, "ModelAlias" and "MakeAlias". You would then need to update your customsettings.ini file to use these aliases. To do this simply following the usage pattern in my example.

Thanks,

Ben

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

Alan.1 — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:02:58 GMT

Ben,

Using this method there appears to be a tendency of BDD 2007 to fail over in various ZTI scripts if the Model environment doesn't get recognized in the Userexit.vbs script.

Instead, if we make the ELSE branch of SetModelAlias() define ModelAlias as an alternate model called "Unknown", this can be defined in the Make and Model database (with at least one MakeModelApplication defined for that model, to force the result set).

Otherwise the ELSE branch could be used to halt Userexit.vbs entirely, i.e. with a popup method in that script which reports the match filed.

What is the reason for re-assigning the value ModelAlias back to the Model column after the database lookup?

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

BenHunter — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:21:25 GMT

Hi Alan,

I use exactly the method you describe, atcept I call it generic rather than unknown :).

The reason I assign the value back to the model column is because BDD will perform a lookup on the model column using the value from ModelAlias. This is the key to how this process works.

Thanks,

Ben

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

Alan.1 — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:07:52 GMT

Ben,

I'm still confused as to what affect the "ModelAlias=Model" directive has on the database lookup.

If it's nothing more than a variable assignment, then we're simply passing the unmodified Model environment straight back into ModelAlias, which was truncated earlier by Userexit.vbs in [SetModel]. Doing so would be contraindicated since of course we actually want the custom Model name that's been added as the truncated version in our Make and Model database.

For this to work it means that ModelAlias was already consumed by the database lookup before this gets re-assigned in [MMSettings] to the value of Model which, for all appearances, would preclude the lookup in [MMApps] defined in the next lower priority.

This means the truncated ModelAlias value is capable of surviving the MakeModelSettings lookup so it matches the MakeModelApplications table. Could you describe how this happens?

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

BenHunter — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:40:57 GMT

Hi Alan,

My previous answer was a little cryptic!

This is not assigning the modelalias value to model. This is used in the construction of the database lookup. So what it is really saying is - look for records where the model column has the same value as modelalias.

Thanks,

Ben

re: BDD 2007 Tips - Creating Model Aliases

Alan.1 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 05:39:00 GMT

Ben,

Thanks for the clarification, thought I was taking crazy pills for a minute there.