USMT Custom XML the Free and Easy Way
Ned has a great post I found this week over on the Directory Services Team Blog. Working with USMT XML files can be frustrating and you always wonder if your syntax is correct. Ned has a nice walkthrough on to use Visual Studio Express (free) to verify your syntax.
Be sure to read the full post here.
Here is a snippet:
Ned here again. XML is used to configure all aspects of USMT 4.0 migration and is especially important when customizing. Unfortunately most IT staffers are not familiar with XML – why should they be? It’s barely used within Windows and is mainly an applications-specific file store. Maybe you noticed that group policy ADMX files are XML – did you care, since you were using the GP editor to make changes?
Unfortunately, there’s no USMT XML editor. What’s more, XML follows programming conventions– tags must be closed; nesting must be complete; rules are case-sensitive. And any mistake in the XML will cause the migration to fail or skip crucial steps.
XML, like any programming file format, has rules. This means that there are tools that can examine that file and see if the rules are being broken – programmers are not super human. One such tool is Visual Studio 2008 Express. It has an excellent suite of XML authoring and validation options – and it’s free :).
Let’s come up with a scenario that requires custom XML, create our file, and then validate it.