Is there a way to limit the deployment of a Custom Inventory Rule - ShellCommandTextReturn
it seems this custom inventory rule will apply to all machines no matter if a label is selected for the software. I tried creating a distribution for the custom inventory rule/software to limit the population through labels or explicitiy selecting machine but the function still seems to apply to every computer that checks in. Is there any way to limit the scope for testing purposes?
Answers (1)
I'm not aware of any way to restrict software inventory items other than using multiple ORGs (separate databases). If you can use multiple ORGs, having one setup just for testing (with test machines) would be a great resource. If I'm not mistaken, though, it does cost more to have.
If that's not viable, you could do something similar with scripting and the text return field. To do this, write your querying script to output the result(s) to a text file, then use the "on success - upload a file" action to upload the resulting file to the targeted computer's inventory (they appear in the "Uploaded Files" section). This will allow you to target your test machines specifically via names or label, then verify via the uploaded files. I took this approach initially when setting up scripts for capturing user profile-specific data and it worked well, but the main drawback is the inability to report using these files. See this post for more details:
Inventorying & Reporting on User Profile-Specific & Other Non-Inventoried Data
http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/inventorying-reporting-on-user-profile-specific-other-non-inventoried-data
Granted, this won't be apples-to-apples since you won't actually be using the custom software inventory rules, but it should be close enough and may be the only good option aside from separate ORGs.
John
