We are excited to inform you that this feature will be included in version 9.0 of the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) and is almost ready for the Beta/Release Candidate program. The Beta program is invaluable in making sure that we are shipping the highest quality product we possibly can. If you are interested in participating in the Beta/Release Candidate program, please send an email with “IT Process Automation” in the subject header to: KACE_BETA@quest.com and we will enroll you as a Beta Candidate.
Note that there are a few pre-requisites for participants:
• Must be on SMA v8.1
• Must be willing to tether with the Release Candidate Team
• Must be willing to schedule a specific date and time that works for you
Thank you in advance for your kind consideration and patience.

I need to chain 3 kace scripts together right now. It would be great if I could do this without a convoluted smart label process.
Thanks!

Yes.

We need the ability to daisy-chain scripts (call one K1 script from within another).

We need to be able to reboot mid-script without losing our place.

Just simple bundle for scripts would be great !

Our environment has a third party anti-executable program that needs to be put into maintenance mode during Kace patching, and needs to exit maintenance mode so that it can whitelist any newly installed applications. In order to do this a script is required to run before an after the scheduled patching. Having this would be extremely useful in resolving Kace's cooperation with other security products.

We, as in a large corporation, would love this option! One thought process for us is to create one K1000 script that makes a call to the list of scripts, Software and Managed Installs in the order we wanted. But we are still waiting for KACE to add this.

How about at least adding an option to scripts to run another script or run a patch schedule. It would be nice to be able to have a script that for instance stop the sqlserver service and then kicks off a patch job. Or in reverse, a patch schedule that runs and then kicks off one or more scripts so that services start correctly. Even a script that runs to make sure certain services started after a reboot and sends an email.

How about one of the script options ( kill a process, unzip a file, etc) being to start a patch schedule? In my environment we have several things we patch where they want the services stopped first. It would be nice to have a script that stops services, verifies they are stopped, and then starts a certain patch schedule.

I have some use cases this would solve as well. Some applications need a quick registry entry added right after the install completes, but I need to run them as the user on the machine, not Local System. Scripts can handle this, but the only way I've been able to do it is to time the script to run every 30 minutes or something, even when I only need it to run once. It causes a delay and runs more than it needs to. If you could tie a script to run right after an install finishes, it would run once and complete right after the delivered application. It would fit my needs perfectly!

I agree, that would very helpful.

I have to agree that scripts grouped together would be extremely useful when deploying new machines or needing to run more than one script in a row.

Script with multilple tasks (+10) possibility to reorder tasks.

Agree to that. Linking Software Distributions is a must have!!!

Having to make a new smart label every time you want to make a new managed install that depends upon other things is one of the most annoying things about Kace. If Kace was really about intuitiveness and simplicity, then they would add dependencies in the managed install section.

If there were dependencies, then you could have one smart label for a certain group of PC's applied to several different managed installs, even if one set of software had to be installed first. (And yes, I know about the priority numbers)

Almost since day 1 of acquiring this product, I have regretted it. We never should have gone away from Altiris!

This is a must. We are currently evaluating the appliances, and this might be a brick wall.

Now, you can get around this using Smart Labels or creative scripting, but I'm currently using a *very* cheap competitor that can do packaging, smart installs, and dependencies in a very intuitive interface.

This should be built into the interface for the price paid, simple as that. If I wanted to script everything, I'd implement the "other" big systems management solution.

I was thinking more along the lines of setting up Script MACROS.

I wanted a Macro for all new PCs that runs a select group of scripts on the PCs specified, and it would obviously run those scripts in order specified in the Macro.

This would be extremely handy. Should not be that hard, as the scripts are already in the database.
This would make for a complete install of a new PC with specific needs.

i would LOVE this

I use a "pending" method with smart labels (mi.pending.NewSoftware) that apply if Software Titles does not contain NewSoftware AND Software Titles does contain DependentSoftware. I then assign the mi.pending.NewSoftware to the Managed Install. If the software needs to be installed on a machine the label is applied at next check in. The To Install list will now include NewSoftware. At the next inventory update after after installation the label will automatically be removed from that machine. You can easily add additional criteria to that smart label definition as well.

As Andy Flesner said, this can actually be realized by "smart labels". But it should be easier to have "required dependancies" like most Linux packages manager (yum, aptitude etc).