Posted by Adam Ruth on Fri, May 18, 2012
We're pleased to announce the availability of Beta 1 of PDQ Inventory 1.1.2. As always, you can download it from here. This beta is mostly fixes and a few features.
- Uninstall Applications
Applications can be uninstalled from the Applications Panel. This requires that the application have a silent "Uninstall String" value, which most will. This command can be executed with PDQ Inventory or copied and pasted to PDQ Deploy. We will improve the integration with PDQ Deploy in a future version.
- Integration support with the upcoming PDQ Deploy 2 beta. Deploy is moving to .NET 4 in version 2 and this requird changes to PDQ Inventory for the integration to work, so versions of PDQ Inventory earlier than this beta won't work with PDQ Deploy 2.
- Fixed a crash when upgrading from version 1.0.
- Fixed an issue with sending Wake-on-LAN to computers with multiple NICs.
- A few other small fixes, which can be viewed here.
As always we hope you enjoy the software and please let us know what more we can do in our Feature Request Forum.
Get the latest PDQ Inventory Beta
Posted by Adam Ruth on Wed, Mar 28, 2012
We're pleased to announce the release of PDQ Inventory 1.1 (Release 2). As always, you can download it from here. This release fixes a number of bugs and adds a couple of new features that you should hopefully find helpful.
New Features
- Version Comparisons in Reports and Collections
Useful for filtering on file and application version numbers. Shane has already gone into this in some detail.
- Added O/S Serial Number
- When upgrading to a new version the whole database is backed up
- File and Registry scanner row limits can now be configured
- Reports can now have a global filter, like the collection window
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where scans were showing up multiple times in the scan or computer window.
- Fixed issue with Active Directory renames not being properly synchronized.
- Fixed occasional "CreateProcess error 32" when anti-virus software would lock the scanner program.
- Fixed bug preventing credentials in name@domain format.
- Fixed issue comparing empty date/time values in report filters.
- Fixed n duplicate key error in scanning certain computer Windows Features.
- Fixed an issue with the Design Report menu being disabled.
- Fixed an issue where some computers would get Access Denied to the service manager.
As always we hope you enjoy the software and please let us know what more we can do in our Feature Request Forum.
Posted by Shane Corellian on Mon, Mar 05, 2012
We have added some new filter comparisons that you can use in your PDQ Inventory collection and report filters. These are known as the Version comparisons and are available in at least version 1.1.1 beta 1 (which is a public beta for Inventory 1.2). If you want to be notified when new beta versions are available you can sign up for notifications here.
The available Version comparisons are:
- version between
- version does not equal
- version equals
- version higher than
- version lower than
- version not between
- version not higher than
- version not lower than
Let's say you want to breakddown all the machines in your network by their Microsoft Office Service Pack versions. This is very handy if you want deploy Office 2010 SP1 to all systems with Microsoft Office 2010 but which don't have SP1.
Go to your Systems with Microsoft Office collection and expand it. Right click on the Systems with Microsoft Office 2010 and select Duplicate.
A new Collection will be created called Systems with Microsoft Office 2010 Copy. Drag this new collection on top of the Systems with Microsoft Office 2010. This will make your new collection a sub-collection (aka Child Collection). With your new collection selected press the Edit button or right click and select "Edit Collection" at the top of your menu.
At this point, rename this new collection to something like Office 2010 (No SP).
Click the Version link and select the version lower than comparison. Enter the value 14.0.6023.1000 in the comparison field. (Enter this value for any filter you have specified)
Your new Collection filter should look something like this:
This collection has two filters. In order for a computer to be a member it must meet the requirements for 1 of these filters (that is where the Match Any grouping comes in). Notice that we have added a version lower than comparison on the Version column in both filters.
What if you want to group computers that only have Office 2007 SP2? Well Office 2007 SP2 has a version that is at least 12.0.6425.1000. So you could use a version higher than comparison, correct? No. If you use a higher than comparison on that value you will also match systems that are running Office 2007 SP3. In this case you would want to use the version between comparison. All you have to do is identify the range of versions that constitute Office 2007 SP2. Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 will have a version no lower than 12.0.6425.1000 and SP3 will have no version lower than 12.0.6612.1000After finding the appropriate values (Microsoft didn't have the versions for Office 2007 SP3 readily available to I installed SP3 to determine it's version which turned out to be 12.0.6612.1000) I created a filter that looked like this:
Let's create a report showing all computers that are running Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 with update lower than 31. To know what version to look for, just go to open a computer (in PDQ Inventory) that is running version 31 and see how it's version is displayed in the Applications panel. I can tell from the screenshot below that Java 6 Update 31 will have a version of 6.0.310.
Go to the Report menu and select New Report > Basic. Call your new report something like "Java 6 lower than Update 31". On the Columns tab click the Add Column button and add Computer > Name. The Computer Name column should show up. Add two more columns, Applications > Name and Applications Version.
After you have entered which columns you want to display go to the Filters tab. Click the Add Filter button. A new Filter will be created. At this point click the Add Column button and select Application > Name. Choose the starts with comparison and enter Java(TM) 6 in the field. Click Add Column and choose Application > Version. Choose the version lower than comparison and type in 6.0.310.
Click the Run Report icon and (assuming you have computers that meet these filter criteria) you should see a window which looks something like the image below. In order to save your new report you must be running PDQ Inventory in Pro Mode.
Remember, in order to use the Version comparisons you must be running PDQ Inventory version 1.1.1. beta 1 or higher.
*Note - The Version comparisons expect digits and can be delimited by dots or commas. The values will stop evaluating at the 4th delimeter or when it hits the first non-digit (dots and commas excluded) character.
Version 1.2.3.4.5.6 will be evaluated as 1.2.3.4
Version 10.2.3R2 will be evaluated as 10.2.3
Version one.two.three will be evaluated as NULL
To determine Microsoft Office Service Pack versions I referred to these KB articles. The Office 2010 article did not, at this writing, contain the version info for Office 2010 SP3.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2121559
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928116
Posted by Shane Corellian on Fri, Feb 17, 2012
We just rolled out PDQ Inventory 1.1. Here is a break down of the features that I feel like writing about. You can see a boring list of new features in the What's New page in PDQ Inventory documentation.
Active Directory (AD) Collections
- These are new collections which show your computers as they appear in Active Directory.
- You can still build dynamic collections using Active Directory attributes but these new AD Collections will help those who wish to manage computers based off of OU membership
Offline Policy
- Attempt Scan
- When this policy is selected a scan will attempted on all computers submitted for scan regardless of their online status. If a computer is offline during a scan a Target Computer Offline error will be logged.
- Do Not Attempt Scan
- If a computer is offline during an inventory scan then a scan will not be attempted.
- The noticable differences between the Do Not Attempt Scan and Attempt Scan policies are that there will not be a Target Computer Offline error logged and the scan will not have to "timeout" since the scan was not attempted on the offline computer.
- Wake-on-LAN then attempt scan
- If a computer is offline during a scan then PDQ Inventory will send a "wake" packet to the target computer. At that point the scan will wait up to 5 minutes before attempting the scan. If the target computer doesn't come online then a Target Computer Offline error will be logged.
Remote Share Access
- In the Windows Shares panel on the Computer window the shared directories will have a link that will take you, via Windows Explorer, to the shared directory on the remote computer
New Scanner Data
- Windows Features
- Go beyond Software Inventory. With this new scanner you will be able to see which Windows Features (AKA Optional Components) are enabled on your computers. There is a new panel on the Computer window for Windows Features.
- Windows Features also added to Dynamic Collections and Reports
There are some other features, most notably the improved AD Sync. I won't document that here because it really deserves its own article. That will be forthcoming.
Thanks to everyone who participated in public beta and to everyone who has made their
feature requests in the PDQ Inventory forum.
We aren't just picking our noses over here (note the word "just"). We are already working on the next release of PDQ Inventory. A quick heads up: In order to accommodate the planned features for the next version of PDQ Inventory we will require that
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 be installed on the Console computer. This requirement does
NOT extend to the target computers (the remote computers that are scanned). It only applies to the computer running the PDQ Inventory console.
Posted by Adam Ruth on Fri, Dec 30, 2011
We're pleased to announce the availability of Beta 3 for PDQ Deploy 1.5. You an get it here and try out the new features and changes.
- Schedules can be configured to stop deploying to successful computers, or to computers that have failed a number of times past a certain threashold. This has been one of our most requested features and we're glad to have it available.
- Computers will be deployed to in the order that deployments were created. Prior to this beta, it was possible for a deployment to "jump the queue" and deploy to a target before an earlier deployment got the chance to.
- Schedules can now be set to always use the "default" user, so that they will change if the default user changes. This setting is now the default.
- Allow multiple deployments to the same computer. This will allow more than one user to deploy to the same computer at the same time. This will be expanded in beta 4 to remove the dreaded "Failed to clean-up target directory" error when a prior deployment is still locking files on the target.
Feel ready to give it a go? Download the beta from here and sign up for e-mail updates when new versions are available.
Posted by Adam Ruth on Thu, Dec 22, 2011
We're pleased to announce the first beta release of PDQ Inventory 1.0.2. It's available now for download.
There are a couple of larger features that should be highlighted:
- Active Directory collections are now available.
For those of you moving from AA Console, this will probably be a welcome addition. Computers that are in Active Directory are automatically placed within these collections, which are themselves automatically generated.
- New data grids.
We've moved over to the same data grids which we introduced in the last PDQ Deploy beta. These grids have a number of nice features for filtering and grouping, as well as doing a better job of printing.
- Copy and paste of scanners and scan profiles.
- Additional options for deleting computers during an AD Sync.
Deleting computers during a sync has always been a bit problemmatic, and now we have 2 deleting options. One option is for when you have a mix of sync'd and manually added computers, and the other for when you have only computers from Active Directory.
- Computer tools can now be used from reports.
Not all reports can use computer tools, because each row doesn't resolve down to a single computer, but most reports will work fine.
In addition to these features there are a number of bug fixes. You can get all of the juicy details in the Update Notes.
As always, we hope you enjoy the changes and we look forward to getting your feedback.
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Posted by Adam Ruth on Fri, Nov 25, 2011
The time has finally come for the Free and Pro versions of PDQ Deploy to be merged. We've been working on getting a single version of PDQ Deploy to match the single version of PDQ Inventory and we're nearly there. This first public beta of PDQ Deploy 1.5 takes us one step closer.
Merging Free and Pro into one product has a number of advantages, not the least of which is the simplification of the development process leading to faster releases of new features. Free users will get the benefits of new features from Pro without waiting and Pro users will get new features faster as we streamline development.
So, what else is new in 1.5? Here's a rundown.
- New data grids supporting printing and exporting to various file formats and other useful features.
- Import from and link to groups in Spiceworks.
- Deployment service. This is new for Free users, now deployments run in a background service allowing the console to be closed while deployments continue running.
- Copy and paste actions from one installer to another.
- Import/Export schedules.
- Improved interaction with the PDQ Deploy service to fix issues with credenditals.
- Many other bug fixes and enhancements.
Beta 2 will include a bunch of new user requested features, so keep an eye out.
Feel ready to give it a go? Download the beta from here and sign up for e-mail updates when new versions are available.
Posted by Adam Ruth on Fri, Nov 11, 2011
We're pleased to announce the second beta release of PDQ Inventory 1.0.1. It's available now for download now.
This beta focuses mainly on bug fixes but there are a couple of small new features.
- When the console starts it will check the PDQ Inventory's credentials and make sure that they are set correctly, restarting the service if needed.
- Added a desription to collections. The description shows up in the header on the collection page.
- Renamed the Scan Date column on computers to Attempted Scan Date to better reflect the value. The next beta will include Successful Scan Date which will contain the date of the last successful scan.
- Added collection filters for Local Users, Local Groups, Local Group Members, and Shares.
The big new feature, however is SQL Reports. Now there are 2 types of report: Basic, using the report builder, and SQL which allows for reports to be created using any valid SQL. Please give it a try and let us know what you think.
Our next scheduled beta will be Beta 2 of PDQ Deploy and Deploy Pro. This beta is taking a bit longer because of one large change. This new version will combine PDQ Deploy and PDQ Deploy Pro into one product. It will work like PDQ Inventory in that it will have a Free and Pro mode. We're going to use the PDQ Deploy product name and it will actually be released as version 1.5.0 (Beta 1).
It's taking some more time to test because the software needs to upgrade both PDQ Deploy and PDQ Deploy Pro. Since it's using the PDQ Deploy name it will install over PDQ Deploy and along side PDQ Deploy Pro, so that you can still run PDQ Deploy Pro while testing PDQ Deploy 1.5.
Thanks again for all of your help with testing the betas.
Download PDQ Inventory 1.0.1 (Beta 2)
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Posted by Adam Ruth on Mon, Aug 01, 2011
We are pleased to announce that the PDQ Inventory beta will go public in the next few days. This first beta will combine PDQ Inventory and PDQ Inventory Pro into a single application instead of being separate applications as was initially planned. This will keep the functionality of both the free and pro versions more closely in-line and make our entire development turn around much faster. No more lag time between features going into pro that also go into free. PDQ Deploy will soon be following suit with this design as well.
The application will run in two modes: Free and Pro. Free mode has a subset of the features available and the rest can be unlocked by entering a Pro mode license key. All beta testers are entitled to a license key which will be valid for the duration of the beta. At the end of the beta license period the application will revert to Free mode. You can then enter a 30-day free trial or full license key to go back to Pro mode without losing any data or settings.
Sign up to be notified when the beta starts and receive a free beta key
There are a few features that didn't make the cut for the first beta, but we will be adding them over the next couple of weeks along with some of the suggestions we will certainly be receiving. We're very excited to get this product into your hands as it will allow us to tackle many of the feature requests of AA Console that have been held off until the release of PDQ Inventory Pro. You can expect to see a lot of new features coming out quickly over the next few months.
This new beta will be called "Beta 9" to keep it in sync with the current Beta 8 of PDQ Inventory. If you are currently running Beta 8 of PDQ Inventory then it will update itself to Beta 9 of PDQ Inventory Pro.
Thank you to all those users who have been testing PDQ Inventory and we hope you like the new Pro features we've added and will be adding.
Posted by Adam Ruth on Wed, Jul 13, 2011
As many of you are already aware, we released PDQ Deploy Pro 1.4 this week. A very big thanks to all of the beta testers who provided feedback and suggestions. We were able to kill a lot of bugs, implement a few enhancements and get some great ideas for future versions.
I won't go into all of the details of what's new in 1.4, that's all available from the original beta announcement. The new features have been well received so far, and we're excited about upcoming improvements.
Where to now?
There are a number of improvements in this new version that we want to get into the free version of PDQ Deploy ASAP, particularly improvements with the user interface. The free version is getting a bit long in the tooth and could use some refreshing. After a thorough examination of our development processes we determined that it would be in everyone's interest to merge the Free and Pro versions of PDQ Deploy into one product. This application will have two modes: "Free Mode" and "Pro Mode". Enabling "Pro Mode" is just a matter of entering a product key, and we will continue to have 30-day trial keys like we do now for anyone that wants to try the Pro features.
This will have a number of advantages. It will make it easier to move up to Pro from Free as the interface will be the same and there will be no need to re-install. It will also make it faster for us to move Pro features into Free, since they only need to be built and released once. Version 1.5 will be the first "merged" version, so keep an eye out for it and let us know what features you would like to see.
Again, thank you to everyone who provided bug reports or feature ideas, it's all been a big help.