Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations

Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations? Do you know about a tool that can create an independent EXE file on a fly? Here it’s, “the rich visual scripting engine for systems management” called “Tool Foundry.”

It can generate EXE files on the fly for the SCCM operations team or desktop support engineers. Before going into more details about Tool Foundry, let’s think about the challenges faced by the SCCM operations team.

I have a series of posts about these challenges of SCCM admins, and one of them is the Daily Worries of SCCM Admins. SCCM team is always in need of creating scripts and in-house applications.

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Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations

These tools or EXEs will be given to the field operations team or desktop team to fix SCCM client issues, WMI issues, or other custom operations tasks. However, the problem with in-house apps and scripts is that they are not “Enterprise-Class.” We can’t manage those tools centrally (remotely)!

Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations
Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins

Think about the possibility of a tool or exe which SCCM admins can create on the fly for a custom requirement without any coding. When you use “Tool Foundry” to create a custom EXE tool, you can make changes in the tool or application from the admin console within a few seconds.

Within a few minutes, these changes will come into effect on remote machines without making any new copy of the EXE file (which you’ve already provided to the relevant teams).! What does that mean? The desktop or Field operations team can use the same old copy of EXE to perform the task with new changes. 

Zero coding efforts for enterprise-class centrally managed EXE. Unbelievable? Super exciting and super innovative stuff. Isn’t it? These EXE Tools can be executed remotely. You can change the password, revoke access, change the parameter values, and have a result written into registry values without updating the actual copy of EXE. 

Adaptiva

What is “Tool Foundry”? Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins?

Tool Foundry is an innovative rich visual scripting engine developed by Adaptiva. This engine enables SCCM / ConfigMgr administrators to seamlessly integrate Adaptiva OneSite and SCCM with the current business process. The tool foundry generates .exe files that can be distributed, executed, and, more importantly, managed remotely.

How to Use “Tool Foundry”?

Initially, we need to create an execution policy for Workflow. By default, Workflow is not allowed to execute. In this screen, you need to drag and drop any Workflow created for your environment. Workflow is nothing logical of the automation which tool needs to be performed down the line.

There are 100 build workflows in the Adaptiva database, and you can use those workflows to create custom TOOL.

Remember, you don’t need to write a single line of code for this. You need to design logic with the visual scripting engine.

Drag and drop the already created workflow and put in a password you need to put in while executing the EXE file. So if a normal user has got a copy of exe, they can’t execute it as this is password protected !!

Tool Foundry Adaptiva Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations
Custom Tool – Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins

Create Custom Tool

:- As you can see, there is an option to set the WORKFLOW password – “Let the user specify the workflow password as a command-line parameter.” Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations?

You can also define the target machine settings for the EXE that we are going to create. In this case, we’ve selected the option “Let the user specify the Adaptiva server or client machine or IP address as command-line parameter.” You can also provide the user description of the tool.

There is also an option to specify the properties; this is the input property, and in this case, it is “Filename.” Add this property “FileName” to Assigned Properties.

Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations
Custom Tool – Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins

Save the TOOL:- Now, we are almost done with the tool creation. How easy? Isn’t it? We need to save the EXE file by clicking on Generate Tool. In this case, the tool name is DF.exe.

Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations
Custom Tool Editor – Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins

Use the TOOL: – Run the created EXE tool with a command prompt on a remote machine.

C:\Temp>df.exe d-xp1 1234 C:\temp\trace32.exe

Where 1234 is the password, we set for the exe tool, next parameter file name, and file path.

Learn How to Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins Daily Operations
cmd – Custom EXE Tools for SCCM Admins

More Details: – Give the tool and take it back from the desktop and field ops team whenever needed. You can also encapsulate your VB scripts into Workflows, and then you can create an EXE tool with limited admin access for a limited period from a central management environment.

This tool, “Tool Foundry,” helps to Automate common IT operations.

Author

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…

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