Application Management with ZENworks is done through Bundles. The fact that some of the application usage needs to be tracked & inventory is the primary way of doing this. However there are instances, where the ZENworks administrator would like to know the life cycle of the application carried by the end user on the managed device.

This application life cycle can be any one of the following or much more.

1) Ability to request for installation of an application.
2) Track the usage of an application by the end user.
3) Ability to inform the malfunction of an application.
4) Ability to track the re-installation of the same application in order to re-use the existing license key.

Enterprise organization has various means of tracking about said activates by various means. E-mail is one such popular way of tracking such end user activities.

How ZENworks helps to achieve these notifications is explained with the User Story of "An administrator would like to know the usage of an application"

User Interactive Way:

This can be achieved by defining the Launch URL action to be able to send e-mail through the user e-mail account on the managed device.

A bundle will typically have a Launch exe or Run Script to launch an application under Launch Action Set. The Launch URL action needs to be configured after the install action in order to receive notification from the user.

Launch URL Action Data: mailto:zenadmin@novell.com?cc=bundle-admin@novell.com&bcc=app-tracking@novell.com&subject=Notification: Filr Application Launched&body=This is a auto generated e-mail to indicate the launching of Filr application.

This will make sure to prompt end user with the above configured e-mail properties. This can be modified as per the notifications request.

Screen shot of Launch URL Action with the required parameters to be able to send e-mail notifications.



End User e-mail Prompt through Novell GroupWise Client



End User e-mail Prompt through Windows Mail App



Non-Attended way:

This can be achieved by using a third party applications or scripts that send an e-mail automatically. This can be configure as Launch Executable or Run Script action to do the same with respective parameters to send notifications.

BLAT (http://sourceforge.net/projects/blat/) is a freeware command line tool that can be used to send email by invoking this with required parameters.

Screen shot of Launch Executable Action with the required parameters to be able to send e-mail notifications.


 

Happy Notifications...