Shortcuts to packages rather than copying packages?

Hey guys.

My PDQ Deploy setup is structured in several categories.

My first category is for New Computer Deployments. Each department has different software that is needed, so within folders for each department I have the basics such as Office 2016, Chrome, Adobe Reader, etc. alongside their department software that everyone in the department uses (Court management software, Police records management software, Finance software, etc). Once Windows has deployed to a machine. I simply push the entire folder for that department under New Computer Deployment to the PC or group of PCs, and they are good to go.

I then have a category that is just the full list of software for each department. This includes the software that everyone receives, as well as all of the applications just a few users use (Bodycam software, Point-of-sale software, etc). It also includes uninstallers for the applications and additional tools and add-ons that not every user needs. This section is for when someone requests access to software, or I need to uninstall and reinstall something for an individual.

I then have a list of just dependencies (SQL Server, C++ Redistributable, Java, etc).

My issue is that I'm having the same software in 3+ folders, so whenever there is an update I have to do, I need to update software in every folder.

Similar to how all of my software is located within my repository, I'm curious if there's a way to have all of my software PACKAGES in a repository and just paste shortcuts to the package within PDQ. If not, is this something that is feasible, or maybe I'm just doing something HORRIBLY wrong with my workflow.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Colby Bouma

September 28, 2020 18:23

I believe what you are looking for is the Nested Package Step: https://documentation.pdq.com/PDQDeploy/19.1.96.0/nested-package-step.htm

Robert Johnson

September 28, 2020 19:21

Thank you. I actually looked at this post from 5 years ago first, but didn't scroll through the comments to see that the Auto-download feature took care of my concerns that I'd need to manually update the nested package every time there's an update!

https://help.pdq.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/211677027-Is-there-a-way-to-have-nested-packages-auto-update-from-the-package-library-to-the-most-current-version-

I've gone ahead and updated all my packages so they're exactly how I wanted them.

Shortcuts to packages rather than copying packages?

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