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This is ZENworks Desktop Management 7 and in this video we're going to give an overview of ZENworks Desktop Management 7, or to put it more simply, what exactly is ZDM7? ZDM7 grew from the Novell Application Launcher that Novell released with NetWare Version 4 and with the old Novell Application Launcher you could create snapshots of program installations and apply those program installations to workstations based upon the logged in user. You could also do very basic policy manipulation as in change the background on the Windows Desktop, or set certain Icons to appear on the Desktop in a certain order, but really that was about it. It was also limited in the fact that it was an external application, an external executable, that had to be run from the Novell Login Script and if, for whatever reason your users did not run this executable, or they got squirrelly with Control-Alt-Delete and killed that nal.exe process, all of your application shortcuts went away. From those humble beginnings all those many years ago, Novell has grown the ZENworks Suite into a full featured product that can do everything from Linux management to Server configuration management, to Hand-held management. We're obviously discussing ZENworks Desktop Management 7, which is one of the core components of the ZENworks Suite. ZDM7 allows you to perform multi-faceted Desktop management. Instead of simply distributing applications to users and to workstations, ZDM7 allows you to do a wide range of administrative functions against your workstations in your organization. You can do Application management, which, as we discussed, is distributing applications to Desktops. You can do Workstation management, which is the application of policies much like group policies in Active Directory. You can do workstation imaging, which is fairly self-explanatory. You can push down images based upon policies or schedules or at random if you really wanted to. You can perform Remote Administration of the workstations; take over the user's workstation remotely and fix the problem a lot quicker than you could walk them through it over the phone; and you can also do Workstation Inventory. Here in this overview we will go into a little detail on each one of these facets of Desktop management in ZDM7, and kind of lay a roadmap for what we're going to talk about over the course of this Title. We'll start with Application Management. With Application Management you can manage MSI-based software, and MSI-based software is what most applications are distributed as today. You have an MSI file or you have an MSI file that's wrapped in a setup buddy XE, and that MSI file has a standard format that Microsoft has developed to allow multiple application distribution vendors to distribute using the same Framework, if you will. ZDM7 supports all of the MSI operations, the Install, Uninstall, Repair, and Change of features that you could do through Add / Remove Programs in the Control Panel. You can also manage traditional installed software. The traditional installed software is what we mentioned earlier, the setup.exe that you run the snapshot with. You take a snapshot of the system before, you take a snapshot of the system after the installation, and any changes that were done to the system can be packaged into a file and distributed to workstations, again, at random. You can also distribute web shortcuts to users. This may appear to be a little less useful than it actually is at first blush. After all, could you not simply distribute an application that ran iexplore.exe and pass the parameter of the URL as a Command Line argument? You can do it that way. What happens if ieplore.exe is not on Drive C? For example, they've installed Windows on Drive D, or Drive F, which I have seen both over the course of my career. Or, what happens if you're distributing applications to a Macintosh that doesn't have Internet Explorer installed? With ZENworks Desktop Management 7 you can distribute just a URL to users; it appears on their Desktop just like any other application. When I double-click it, it launches in the default browser. With the Application Management function of ZDM7 you can associate applications with either users or with workstations so that the application would either follow the user around to whatever workstation they happen to log into, or would stay with that workstation and be available to any user that happens to log in. You can also create application dependencies. For example, if you have a custom-written SQL front end that requires the Native SQL Client to be installed, you can create ZENworks applications for both your custom SQL front end, and the Native SQL Client, and create a dependency that says: This front end cannot be run unless this Native SQL Client application has already been run successfully and installed on the workstation. And last, but not least, you can control Application Execution. If, for example, you don't want users running notepad.exe, you can create what's called a Rogue Program Entry that says: These workstations are not allowed to execute notepad.exe. Once you distribute this Registry entry to your target workstations, the next time someone tries to launch a notepad.exe, even if they've renamed it, they get a message that the administrator has disallowed that program from running. This seems like a good idea, and perhaps in later versions of ZENworks Desktop Management this will be implemented a little better. In my experience, once you put these rogue program blocks on a workstation it's next to impossible to get those blocks off the workstation if ever in the future you want to allow that program to run again.