Jason Frost at myITforum.com

Have you ever been reviewing a report out of SMS or ConfigMgr and wanted to be able to send a machine name to your SMS Remote Tool Page?  Well with IE 8, and accelerators you can. 

If you don't know what SMS Remote Tools Page is see http://www.myitforum.com/articles/19/view.asp?id=8662  & http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/skissinger/archive/tags/RCrumbaker+3.21+Customizations/default.aspx

We may be able to do this as well with the now infamous Web Essentials, but we won't know until it is officially released. (Sorry had to get that jab in there)

The first thing you will have to set up in making your Remote Tools Web Page accept passed variable. http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/csummers311/archive/2009/02/12/use-a-query-string-to-populate-the-computer-in-ron-crumbaker-s-web-remote-tools.aspx

Now time for the accelerator:  Accelerators are created using an XML file - so lets start by creating one of these I will walk us through it.  Below is the code you will want in you XML file. I called mine SCCMADM.XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<os:openServiceDescription
    xmlns:os="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0">
    <os:homepageUrl>http://servername/smsremote</os:homepageUrl>
    <os:display>
        <os:name>SCCM Admin</os:name>
        <os:icon>http://servername/smsremote/oscar.ico</os:icon>
        <os:description>Open to ConfigMgr Remote Tools Page</os:description>
    </os:display>
    <os:activity category="ConfigMgr">
        <os:activityAction context="selection">
            <os:preview action="http://servername/smsremote/?SMachine={selection}" />
            <os:execute action="http://servername/smsremote/" method="get">
                <os:parameter name="sMachine" value="{selection}" type="text" />
            </os:execute>
        </os:activityAction>
    </os:activity>
</os:openServiceDescription>

The first line we are concerned with is os:homepageUrl>http://servername/smsremote</os:homepageUrl>  This is the your SMSremote page edit the servername and path to your SMS remote page

The next section is what will show up when you hightlight and right click on a machine name in IE8 -> this shows up in the accelerator section.

<os:name>SCCM Admin</os:name> - This is the Name that Shows up
<os:icon>http://servername/smsremote/oscar.ico</os:icon> - this is the Icon that shows up
<os:description>Open to ConfigMgr Remote Tools Page</os:description> - this is the discription that shows up
I put an ICON file in the same directory as SMSRemote web page.  you can change all of these if you want to whatever you would like.

The last section is the meat of the accelerator:  This is where you tell it what you want it to do.

<os:activity category="ConfigMgr">
        <os:activityAction context="selection">
            <os:preview action="http://servername/smsremote/?sMachine={selection}"/>
            <os:execute action="http://servername/smsremote/" method="get">
                <os:parameter name="sMachine" value="{selection}" type="text" />
            </os:execute>
        </os:activityAction>
    </os:activity>

The OS:activity category can be whatever you like, there are a set of standard categories like blog or map, but you can only set one accelerator per category to be a default, so I suggest making your own category like SMS or ConfigMgr.  The OS:preview action gives you a preview of the page you are going to send it to.  You can remove this if you don't want to see a preview.  The OS:execute action is the page that will actually open when you click on the accelerator.  The method "get" is what passes the parameter name and value to the web page.

The biggest problem people have with making your accelerator is that all web address must be in the web page.  So the icon file, the preview page, the execution page and the homepage all have to match.

That is basically it for making the accelerator now you have to get it installed.  To do this you have to create an HTML page to install it.  See Below for a sample HTML page. The orange section is the important part of the Html doc.

<html>
<head>
  <title> VIEW SCCM ADMIN Page </title>
   </head>
<body>
<h3>Click on the button below to install the "VIEW SCCM ADMIN Page" IE8 Accelerator</h3>
<br/>
The "VIEW SCCM ADMIN Page" IE8 Accelerator can be used with Machine names.
<br/><br/>
<button id="myButton"
    onclick="window.external.AddService('http://servername/accelerators/SCCMADM.xml')">
    VIEW SCCM ADMIN Page</button>
<hr/>
<br/>
<br/><br>Note:- This Accelerator works in IE8 browser only.
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-245201-2";
urchinTracker();
</script>
</body>
</html>

You now just have to put the HTML on a website, you can just copy it into the SMS remote tools page and in your web browser go directly to the HTML file or you can setup a separate page for your accelerators that you create and publish.

Once you have the accelerator installed you will want to set this up as your default accelerator for category “ConfigMgr”.  To do this open IE, goto Tools | Manage Add-ons | go to the Accelerators button | Scroll down until you find the “ConfigMgr” section | Highlight your accelerator | click set as default.

That is it.  Have fun with it

I would like to thank Ron Crumbaker, Sherry Kissinger, and Chris Summers for the above mention articles.