How to Remove Unused Applications Automatically From Windows Machines

How to Remove Unused Applications Automatically From Windows Machines. Are you looking for an automated method to Remove Unused applications?

If so, we can do this through CM 2012 and Orchestrator. ConfigMgr 2012 Software metering is the main feature used to perform this task along with System Center Orchestrator Runbook.

So, at last, there is something useful that we can make out of Software Metering Data!

How to Remove Unused Applications Automatically From Windows Machines

How to Remove Unused Applications Automatically From Windows Machines
How to Remove Unused Applications Automatically From Windows Machines

There is a series of blog posts that can help you to automate the “unused application removal process”. Following Five topics are covered in those posts. Neil Peterson has done a wonderful job by sharing these posts. Find the post details below.

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1. Internals of software metering

This is all about how to create software metering rule/s, how to verify the software metering is enabled on the client-side and server-side.

2. Collection creation based on software metering data

Creation of collection using the data collected through Software Metering. This collection/s would be used at the time of the Final Removal process.

3. Software removal based on collection membership

This covers, how to remove software/s based on collection membership. This collection can be used to target software removal Applications/Package.

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4. Sample automation that provides advanced warning of pending software removal.

Based on the primary user, User Device Affinity data, the notification mail will be sent out to the primary users about the removal of Unused applications/software from their primary machine.

5. An orchestrated final removal process.

This explains, how to create an Orchestrator Runbook to automate the removal process.

Picture Courtesy: free computer maintenance dot com

Resources

Free SCCM Training Part 1 | 17 Hours Of Latest Technical Content | ConfigMgr Lab HTMD Blog (anoopcnair.com)

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…

2 thoughts on “How to Remove Unused Applications Automatically From Windows Machines”

  1. How to notify user about unused software – without orchestrator integration

    We have enabled software metering in our environment, now that we have identified 200 users have not used the metered software for more than 30 days, so next step is to notify the users that they have a software and not being used for more than 30 days and in 15 days the software will be automatically removed from the computer.

    Requirement from business to have a popup on computers that has unused software with Software name, Number of days unused and days left to uninstall from workstation.

    We need to achieve this with out orchestrator integration, any help will be much appreciated.

    Reply
    • hi sudarsan, did you get a solution for your query. Our team also have the same requirement and we are searching for the most feasible method. if you got anything to share with us please reply at ranjanmanna@gmailDOTcom

      Reply

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