Automatic deployment to new computers?
Is there a way of creating a automatic deployment of a package when a computer appears in an OU? Our newly imaged computers go into a separate OU until ready and it would be great if I could push out my mandatory apps once it arrives in that OU.
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You can schedule a deployment to an OU. I don't think Heartbeat would work, so you'd have to do something like every 15 minutes.
Targets --> Choose Targets --> Active Directory
However, you'd probably want to create a collection that looks for OU membership and whether or not the target has the application installed. Otherwise you will continuously deploy the application to the PC until it's removed from the OU.
Shameless plug, I wrote this: http://www.adminarsenal.com/admin-arsenal-blog/automating-software-installs-for-imaged-computers/
Depending on the apps, why not just include them in the image? FOG is really handy for quickly updating and deploying images. We've pushed out 130+GB images in 5-6 minutes using FOG, though updating the base image for use later can take significantly longer. You wouldn't have to worry about your prep OU and you could still have fun with PowerShell to name the computer, join it to the domain, and put it into the OU you actually want it in (PowerShell Blogger has a blog about doing all three).
Because depending on environment a 130+ GB image when compressed still takes a lot of disk space if you have more than a few hardware models to support.
It's much faster for us to Image a computer with latest drivers and windows updates, and let PDQ Deploy do the heavy lifting of getting applications installed post-image.
You definitely *could* just add everything you need into the image itself and upload it, but I like personally using Deploy after the fact. YMMV.