The Problem
One of the main drawbacks of the MDT Web FrontEnd (there aren’t many ;-) ) is, that it does not have direct access to the Deployment Share(s). Normally that wouldn’t be a problem as most of the settings don’t interact with anything stored in the Database. Except applications imported into MDT. As you know you can import Applications into MDT and use them in your Deployment. As long as you choose them directly in the LTI Wizard no problem. But what if you want to add those applications to the database?
Possible solutions
You could type them in. Probably possible and the Beta 2 of the FrontEnd was just offering a single textbox for this. I have to admit, it was a bad idea as MDT is referencing each application internally using a GUID (Yes, one of those unhandy, 32 character long thingies). Ok, time to improve it. How could we solve this?
The long term solution is probably to add some Powershell capabilities into the FrontEnd and let it communicate directly with a MDT Deployment Share to get the necessary information. As this is not as easy as it sounds, I choose an intermediate step for the first release of the FrontEnd. You simply import an existing Applications.xml file into the FrontEnd. The Applications.xml file can be found on each Deployment Share in the Control folder and stores the information about all applications available in MDT. The FrontEnd will read this file and import parts of the information into a table in the MDT Database making it possible to select those applications in the FrontEnd instead of typing them in.
An Example
Let’s see an example.
Open the MDT Web FrontEnd, click on the Admin and then on the Applications tab. If already imported you will see a list of all currently available applications. This will be a merged combination of all Applications imported into the FrontEnd using the Applications.xml file and all other applications configured either by hand or by the MDT Workbench. All Applications not imported yet will be shown with their GUID value.
OK, to import the Applications.xml file, click on the button labeled “Upload MDT Applications.xml file”.
On the following screen, click on the Browse button to pick the appropriate file (as said you will find it in the Control folder of a MDT Deployment Share). Then select if you would like to fully synchronize or just update the the applications. The difference is, that a synchronize will also remove applications no longer in the applications.xml file from the Database including all references to it. An update will keep those old entries. Generally a synchronize is the right option as you probably don’t want to use applications no longer available in MDT itself. But the update might be an option if you need to import several files if you use the same database from different Deployment points with different applications. Should not be common but it is possible. Click on "Upload” to start the import.
The import shouldn’t take much time and after it you should be redirected to the list of applications again and now be able to see the newly imported Applications. Now you can use them in other screens as well:
Another thing I would like to mention about the Admin – Applications tab. From here you can also completely remove or replace a single application from the database including all references. To see the list of all references, click on the name of the application (which is actually a link). To delete or update click the appropriate icons.
For more information about other topics have a look on the Documentation on Codeplex. If you aren’t using the FrontEnd yet, just download it from Codeplex now and follow the Installation Guide. It will take you less than 10 minutes and you will already be able to configure your first values no matter if you are using the MDT Database already or just going to create it now.
I really appreciate all the feedback. Just get back to me if you need to have a specific topic covered in more detail.
This How To is part of a series showing different features of the Web FrontEnd. If you got something useful out of this one, please also have a look on the others published so far:
- How To restrict access to the Deployment Database
- How To configure what a User can see and edit
- How To handle Custom Settings
- How To create custom Lists to select pre-defined values for a setting
- How To handle MDT Applications in the FrontEnd
- How To handle SCCM packages