1. Advertisement Tracking

Tracking advertisements allows following the progress of an advertisement in real-time.

1.1. Tracking an advertisement

When selecting an advertisement in ConfigMgr, a new Track in NEXThink Console action appears:

Clicking on the action brings up the following dialog:

Two different aspects of advertisements can be tracked:

• Presence of a package
• Execution of any one binary in a set of binaries

Please note that at least one of the two tracking mode must be selected.

1.1.1. Tracking Packages

The Tracking in NEXThink Console action extracts the information available in the associated package to pre-fill those fields. If the package does not contain this information, you can also extract it from the MSI file itself: click on the ellipsis (...) button at the right of the value entry fields. This opens a file dialog where you can select the advertised MSI file.

The information can also be manually modified. If an Engine is connected, the autocomplete lists will make it easier to pick the correct Package, Manufacturer, and Product version.

Please note that the version number entry can be left empty. In this case, package matching will only take name and manufacturer into account.

Please note that tracking advertisements targeting collection hierarchies (collection + subcollections) is fully supported.

1.1.2. Tracking Execution of Binaries

Execution tracking is useful for verifying the correct deployment of a Package, ensuring the users are actually able to launch the corresponding Binaries.

Check the Track execution of any of the following binaries checkbox in order to enable Binaries tracking. When Binaries tracking is enabled it is possible to disable Packages tracking.

To add new Binaries, click the Add... button; the following dialog is shown:

The dialog allows specifiying the name of the new Binary to track as well as its version. If an Engine is connected, the autocomplete lists will make it easier to pick the correct Binary. As an alternative the information can also be directly extracted from a .exe file by clicking on the ellipsis (...) button.

Hint: the version number can also be left empty or partially filled in. Leaving the version number empty will match any binary with the specified name, no matter the version. Introducing a partial version will match all sub-version numbers. For instance, in the example above we could replace version 5.9.3.0 with 5 in order to track Binaries with any version starting with 5 (5.0.0.0, 5.1, 5.9.3.0, etc.).

Use the Edit... and Remove buttons to modify the list of tracked Binaries.

1.2. Advertisement tracking node

The advertisement tracking node contains up to 3 sub-nodes depending on the tracking options selected (as shown in the previous section):

• Package tracking
• Execution tracking
• Combined package and execution tracking

1.2.1. Package Tracking

The Package tracking node shows the number of sources which have the Package and the number of sources which do not yet have the package. Clicking on one of the two sub-nodes will run the corresponding investigation.

1.2.2. Execution Tracking

The Execution tracking node shows the number of sources where at least one of the Binaries being tracked has been executed at least once, as well as the sources where none of the Binaries has been executed.

1.2.3. Combined Package and Execution Tracking

This node shows the number of sources where the Package has been installed and at least one of the Binaries has been executed, as well as the sources the the Package has not been installed and none of the Binaries have been executed.

1.3. Refresh action

As elsewhere in NEXThink Console, you can click on the standard Refresh node action to update the numbers with real-time data from the engine, or on the refresh icon at the top of the results list.

1.4. Update action

If the members of the advertisement target collection change, click on the Update action of the advertisement node. The list of target sources will be updated with latest data from the SCCM database.