One of our favorite tasks when it comes to SCCM management is SCCM Custom Report Creation. Not only does it bring value to an SCCM installation, but it also brings visibility to your hard work toward your management. Without SCCM reports, this huge management tool is running silently on all your devices but you’re not benefiting from all the advantages. It’s like having a sports car and discovering the Autobahn … ok maybe not. But what makes a good SCCM Custom report? In our opinion, the default SCCM Reports are lacking many of those points. Yes, they offer valuable data but they are often not adapted to your environment and are visually… basic. For all those reasons, we started to create our own set of reports and due to their growing popularity, we decided to help you begin your own SCCM report creation process. For this example, we will show the process … Read More
How to use SCCM Content Library Cleanup Tool
Starting with SCCM 1702, a new command line tool is available to remove content that is no longer associated with any package or application from a distribution point. The SCCM Content library cleanup tool (ContentLibraryCleanup.exe) can help you save up valuable space in a specific distribution point content library. The tool will delete content from the library based on the specified distribution point when the tool is run. SCCM Content Library Cleanup Tool Requirements You can run the content library cleanup tool directly on the computer that hosts the distribution point or remotely from another server You can run the tool from a single distribution point at a time You will need to have Full Administrator RBAC Role and the “All” Security scope in the Configuration Manager hierarchy Running the Tool You can find ContentLibraryCleanup.exe in the SCCMInstallationDir\cd.latest\SMSSETUP\TOOLS\ContentLibraryCleanup\ folder on the primary site or central administration site. You can run the tool … Read More
How to Manage SCCM IIS Log Files
After a couple of weeks of running an SCCM server, you may get the C:\ drive full. What are the best practices to save disk space on an SCCM server? The first thing we check is how much space is filled by SCCM IIS log files. Usually, it takes a couple of GB on the drive. It’s an absolute must to implement solutions to delete SCCM IIS logs files from your primary server. The SCCM IIS logs files are usually in C:\Inetpub\Logs\LogFiles and are increasing at a rapid pace. In my lab environment with 50 clients, it’s growing at about 1MB per day. Not much… but on an SCCM site, I’m actually managing with a couple of thousand clients, it grows 150 MB a day. It could fill up a drive pretty quickly. There are numerous ways to manage SCCM IIS log files : Delete the logs manually or use a scheduled task Use … Read More
Deploy SCCM Wifi Profiles with Password to Windows 10 Devices
Introduced since SCCM 2012 R2, SCCM Wifi profiles are used to send Wifi configurations to clients. It can be useful if your company is not using certificates or any automated authentication methods. A smaller organization that uses a simple WPA2 setup can use SCCM Wifi profiles to send Wifi SSID and password so that the computers connect automatically to that network. You can also use Wifi profile to manage mobile devices with Intune but we won’t cover this scenario in this post. The major drawback of the SCCM Wifi Profile is that it’s impossible to enter the Wifi password using the console UI. (Even in the newest versions). We will show you how to deploy Wifi profiles on a Windows 10 or Windows 8.1 computer, including the Wifi password using an XML file. How to deploy SCCM Wifi Profiles with password to Windows 10 devices Since it’s not possible to enter a password in … Read More
SCCM Report Builder Error – The Certificate Chain was issued by an Authority that is not Trusted
If you’re like us and love to create and build awesome reports, you may get an error when running report builder on a remote computer. When editing an SCCM report in Report Builder you may receive the following error: A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 – The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted.) SCCM Report Builder error – Cause This error occurs because you don’t have the required SCCM SQL certificate on the computer running Report Builder. Follow the following steps in order to resolve the issue. Export the certificate from your SQL server On the SQL Server Click the Start menu, click Run, and then type mmc. Click Enter. This starts the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) In the console, click the File menu and then click Add/Remove Snap-in On the … Read More
Extend your inventory with SCCM Active Directory Attributes
SCCM Active Directory System Discovery is a discovery method to bring discovered devices into your SCCM server. It’s one of the most used discovery methods for its simplicity. Many organization extends their Active directory to include custom attributes to their records. By default, SCCM brings a couple of default Active Directory attributes but it’s also possible to bring any custom attribute that you may have. The good news is that it’s quite simple to add these custom Active Directory Attributes to your SCCM Discovery methods. What is more complicated is how to fetch this data once it’s discovered. Over the years, we’ve seen much different information stored in AD Attributes. For this post, we’ll add the Description attribute from a computer account to SCCM and describe how to query this information to create collections or reports. SCCM Custom Active Directory attributes Configuration The first step is to find the name of … Read More
How to Find SCCM Server Log Files
Here’s a simple tip to know which SCCM server logs files to check if you want to dig an error returned by an SCCM Component. In SCCM, client and site server components record process information in individual SCCM log files. You can use the information in these log files to help you troubleshoot issues that might occur. The default path to find the SCCM server logs files is in your SCCM Installation Directory\Logs. If you’ve used the default installation directory, it will be located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\Logs. The problem is that when opening this directory, you’ll find dozens of SCCM logs files. When you manage SCCM for multiple years, you get to know which logs to look at, but as a beginner, it can be hard to find the right log. This post aims to help you find the right log file based on a specific component error. … Read More
Monitor SCCM Task Sequence Progress
When deploying Windows 10 operating system using SCCM (OSD), you will need to monitor SCCM task sequence progress. This allows us to track task sequence start, end time and most importantly errors (if any). Our post will show 4 different ways to monitor SCCM task sequences. Each of them has its own benefits and drawbacks. Monitor SCCM Task Sequence Using the Console You can view the progress of a task sequence using the SCCM console. This method is simple and easy but permit to see the status of only one machine at the time. If your deployment staff don’t have access to the console or view deployment status, this option is not for you. Open the SCCM Console Go to Monitoring / Deployments Search and right-click the deployment linked to your Windows 10 task sequence On the menu, select View Status In the Deployment Status screen, select the In Progress tab for a running … Read More
How to upgrade SCCM SQL version
SQL Server is obviously a key component to take care of, for a healthy SCCM infrastructure. While SCCM supports a wide variety of SQL Server versions, keeping it up to date may be a good idea to avoid getting out of support. In this post, we will detail how to upgrade SCCM SQL 2014 to SQL 2017. SQL 2019 is available for a couple of weeks, but it’s still not listed as supported in the SCCM documentation. If you’re looking to install SQL 2017 from scratch, jump to our post on this topic. Upgrade SCCM SQL version Requirements Current SQL versions must be one of the following : SQL Server 2008 SP4 or later SQL Server 2008 R2 SP3 or later SQL Server 2012 SP2 or later SQL Server 2014 or later SQL Server 2016 or later Download SQL reporting services Download SQL Management studio The operating system is still … Read More
Identify Office Products with its architecture using SCCM report
I did blog post year ago on Microsoft office product versions with its architecture type and count. But lately, my blog readers have requested to add Office 365 ProPlus product into the report. The Original Office Product report was created to include all Microsoft Office products from Office 2007 to Office 2016 but it doesn’t have any click-to-run (C2R) products which are Office 365. So we started looking around and developed the report for you. This free report will have all Microsoft Office products information with its architecture type (x86 or x64) and the count. The report can be run on a specific collection which is useful to scope specific group of machines. This can be used as all-in-one SCCM report for Microsoft Office product versions with architecture type. This report comes with a drill-down feature to see the list of all devices with the selected product. You’ll need our … Read More