You can use both a Registry and a File Condition, but not multiple of either. You can write a PowerShell script that checks multiple conditions and stores a value in the registry. What are the conditions you wish to check?
I realise I could use Powershell to accomplish the same thing but this functionality being built-in would be extremely useful. It would also reduce the number of steps required to deploy a package, as well as making it more obvious on the step, what the conditions
Are there any plans to add this functionality?
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There are no current plans as far as I can tell, so I created an internal feature request ticket for this.
I'm currently trialling PDQ Deploy as replacement for SCCM which is overkill for our organisation, creating almost as many problems as it solves.
I'd like to add that it would also be nice if you could specify the conditions as AND or OR. For example, I want to check both the presence of a directory and a registry key. If one of them doesn't exist, I want to install the package. I can't currently do that as the File and Registry conditions both need to be true for it to pass
I have a number of packages where this is a requirement, such as Office 64-bit. I need to both check the platform (x86 or x64) to differentiate between 32-bit and 64-bit office (in our case we're upgrading from one to another), and that the product is actually installed. In other cases, there's simply not one metric that can be checked, and multiple conditions need to be true before you could consider an application as installed (or not installed).
Really surprised more people haven't requested this as it's a bit of a show stopper for us at this point.
Thanks Colby. I did explore that option, and it does work. The problem is that it this somewhat fails the "simpler and less painful than SCCM" criteria for us. In our case, to deploy Office 64-bit (replacing 32-bit), I'd need both a deployment collection, as well as a collection for the condition. I also need to add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration" as a scan location as that's where the key I want to check is. It also depends on having a PDQ Inventory license, though I imagine most would have that. There's also the question of how often it should PDQ Inventory should rescan the registry. Microsoft Office isn't the only deployment we have that needs to check multiple criteria. I'd say about 1/6th of our deployments require it. It's just a lot more complicated than I believe it should be, and I think supporting multiple conditions in PDQ Deploy would be a much more intuitive and elegant solution.
This is also something I find lacking with PDQ compared to the management software I am in the process of trying to shift away from.
Building out collections for multiple conditions has is place, but being able to specify multiple conditions in the properties of a step also has its place. I'd rather rely on collections for complex scenarios (say, when conditions exceed x amount of items) while if I simply needed two conditions of the same type (e.g. files existing) I'd rather have the ability to just set that in the properties of the step.
Here is a screenshot of our current management software and how it handles multiple conditions for a 'step' (or as they call it, an 'action')
Comments
You can use both a Registry and a File Condition, but not multiple of either. You can write a PowerShell script that checks multiple conditions and stores a value in the registry. What are the conditions you wish to check?
Really appreciate your quick response.
The simplest one I would want to use is:
if File A & File B exists, do X
I realise I could use Powershell to accomplish the same thing but this functionality being built-in would be extremely useful. It would also reduce the number of steps required to deploy a package, as well as making it more obvious on the step, what the conditions
Are there any plans to add this functionality?
There are no current plans as far as I can tell, so I created an internal feature request ticket for this.
Awesome, thanks
Hi,
I'm currently trialling PDQ Deploy as replacement for SCCM which is overkill for our organisation, creating almost as many problems as it solves.
I'd like to add that it would also be nice if you could specify the conditions as AND or OR. For example, I want to check both the presence of a directory and a registry key. If one of them doesn't exist, I want to install the package. I can't currently do that as the File and Registry conditions both need to be true for it to pass
I have a number of packages where this is a requirement, such as Office 64-bit. I need to both check the platform (x86 or x64) to differentiate between 32-bit and 64-bit office (in our case we're upgrading from one to another), and that the product is actually installed. In other cases, there's simply not one metric that can be checked, and multiple conditions need to be true before you could consider an application as installed (or not installed).
Really surprised more people haven't requested this as it's a bit of a show stopper for us at this point.
Collection Conditions 😉
https://youtu.be/XD5UeDJGnYE
https://documentation.pdq.com/PDQDeploy/17.2.0.0/common-step.htm#collectioncondition
Thanks Colby. I did explore that option, and it does work. The problem is that it this somewhat fails the "simpler and less painful than SCCM" criteria for us. In our case, to deploy Office 64-bit (replacing 32-bit), I'd need both a deployment collection, as well as a collection for the condition. I also need to add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration" as a scan location as that's where the key I want to check is. It also depends on having a PDQ Inventory license, though I imagine most would have that. There's also the question of how often it should PDQ Inventory should rescan the registry. Microsoft Office isn't the only deployment we have that needs to check multiple criteria. I'd say about 1/6th of our deployments require it. It's just a lot more complicated than I believe it should be, and I think supporting multiple conditions in PDQ Deploy would be a much more intuitive and elegant solution.
This is also something I find lacking with PDQ compared to the management software I am in the process of trying to shift away from.
Building out collections for multiple conditions has is place, but being able to specify multiple conditions in the properties of a step also has its place. I'd rather rely on collections for complex scenarios (say, when conditions exceed x amount of items) while if I simply needed two conditions of the same type (e.g. files existing) I'd rather have the ability to just set that in the properties of the step.
Here is a screenshot of our current management software and how it handles multiple conditions for a 'step' (or as they call it, an 'action')
https://i.ibb.co/61LW0zD/Capture.jpg
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