This is a technique that we pioneered in the SMS 2.0 days, and has continued to find useful applicability.
There a number of techniques to inventory computers, and locate resources within ConfigMgr. However, have you ever found those unique situations where the normal methods of hardware/software inventory either do not work, or require a lot of effort to obtain?
This is a two part process:
1) Enable software inventory of file type: '*.flg'
2) Use a script, package, gpo, login script, etc. to create a <filename>.flg on the computer
ConfigMgr software inventory will find and process the <filename>.flg file and store it as software data for the computer. Now, it is very easy to locate those computers with a web reports, or use a query, which could in turn be the basis for a collection. By using a custom file type, we will likely only process those files that are useful to us without a lot of background noise or huge number of inventory records. Ever enable software collection on *.dll? :)
My next blog post will illustrate a practical example of this technique.