Target Computers by Users' usergroup membership
Problem: The *they* in your organization (whether that is management, another team you don't have influence over, or just policies that are difficult to influence at this time), *they* want you to advertise software to users in a usergroup. But you know that although SMS can target users and usergroups, software distribution history on the local client goes into a different area in WMI, and the right-click tools, SMSClient Center, and lots of other wonderful SMS utilities either don't interface with that user-specific WMI area at all, or are inconsistent, so you want to advertise to the Machines, not the users.
Solution: From http://www.systemcentertools.com, grab Security Login Audit Tool (SLAT). Follow the instructions for configuring SLAT (requires 3 basic things: you may need modify your GPO settings to record Security Audit information locally in the event log, modify your sms_def.mof (and compile it on the server and all clients), and schedule the SLAT scan to run on a recurring basis. But once that is done, you can use the new tables/views created to get "computers where the highest ranked user is a member of usergroup <whatever>". Example of a query-based collection below. The example below also limits the results to machines that have reported a Hardware Inventory in the last 7 days.
select SMS_R_System.ResourceID,SMS_R_System.ResourceType,
SMS_R_System.Name,SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier,
SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SMS_R_System.Client
from
SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_MCS_USERLOGONINFO_1_0
on SMS_G_System_MCS_USERLOGONINFO_1_0.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId
inner join SMS_G_System_WORKSTATION_STATUS
on SMS_G_System_WORKSTATION_STATUS.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId
where
SMS_G_System_MCS_USERLOGONINFO_1_0.UserName in
(select UserName from SMS_R_User where UserGroupName like "%TechnologyPilot%") and SMS_G_System_MCS_USERLOGONINFO_1_0.UserRank = 1 and
datediff(day,SMS_G_System_WORKSTATION_STATUS.LastHardwareScan,getdate()) <= "7"
You could of course do something similar without the user ranking add-on; but you will most likely get inconsistent results as the v_r_system.user_name0 can change or be blank. If you are SP3, and have it enabled, you could replace the SLAT information and instead use the Console User information.