Desktop Authority Wins Redmond Roundup

This month, Redmond Magazine's Peter Varhol (Redmond's Executive Editor of Reviews) headed up an Automating the Desktop "Redmond Roundup" comparing three solutions, each addressing Desktop Management from very different angles.

Desktop Authority was named the Redmond Roundup Champion with its score of 8.8 out of 10, beating out ActiveBatch and Privilege Manager (which was mistakenly named champion, but only actually received a score of 8.4). Kace's KBox was also mentioned in the article, but did not participate in the scoring.

Peter praises Desktop Authority by saying "I found Desktop Authority to provide great information and make a number of activities involving servicing desktops far easier that they could be done manually."

Peter does a great job covering the wide range of capabilities Desktop Authority has; from its ability to eliminate the need for logon scripts, to application deployment, to software inventory to USB and Port security, to patch management. You can read about thie comparison on Redmond Magazine's website.

MSI Studio 4.0 Now Available!

It's a very busy week for us at ScriptLogic - First, the release of Desktop Authority 7.7, then the acquisition of Kemma Software, and today we released Desktop Authority MSI Studio version 4.0.

This is a very exciting release for us becuase, in addition to the various improvements we've made to the product (which I'll mention in a moment), it integrates with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007!

The integration is made possible using the Configuration Manager Package Deployment Wizard which is ued to establish the SCCM settings and then deploys the package to SCCM. As always, MSI Studio also integrates with Desktop Authority's Software Management Repository.

In addition, MSI Studio also has the following enhancements:

• Improved Workflow-Oriented Interface - the editor interface can be expanded, collapsed and reorganized to improve MSI creation workflow



• Custom Action Wizard - actions, such as running an external script or additional MSI package can be easily added through MSI Studio's wizard-driven process



• Dialog Sequencing - Now you can only allow the desired installation screens to be visible to the end-user



• Simplified Packaging of Support Files - this is helpful should you need a license file (or any other type of supporting file) to be dropped into the installation folder without needing to editing the MSI package itself



• Windows Installer Patch File Support - Existing MSIs can be updated using MSPs, as well as MSPs can be created using MSI Studio's Patch Creation Wizard
  

Take 2 minutes with the interactive Walkthrough Demo to get a feel for the product.

Also, 30-day evalution is available on our website.

ScriptLogic and the Help Desk

We announced this morning that we have acquired the assets of Kemma Software, the creators of the BridgeTrak help desk solution. This is a fantastic acquisition for ScriptLogic and will enhance our desktop and management offering.

You can read the press release here. More to come about this exciting solution in the coming weeks!

Desktop Authority 7.7 Released!

I've been on hiatus from the blog, focusing on a ton of internal needs, but I'm excited to get things started back up by announcing we released Desktop Authority 7.7 last week!


This release includes some awesome enhancements to our award winning Desktop Management solution in four key areas: client support, reporting, patch management and USB/Port Security.

Client Support - While we made Desktop Authority ready for Windows Vista back in version 7.6, we've added support for 64-bit hardware, allowing you to manage all of the newest Windows desktops out there.

Reporting - We've added a fantastic reporting wizard to make building your own custom reports even easier.



Patch Management - There are a number of new enhancements:

• Support for patching in multiple languages


• Patch Rollbacks - as simple as selecting the patch and "Rollback" from a dropdown menu


• User Deferment - patching can be configured to allow user to defer the patch a number of times before it is forced


• Reboot Options - Choose to bypass reboots and/or allow users to cancel reboots


• The Update and Patch Download Service - if you have ScriptLogic servers with no access to the Internet (as is the case for a number of government agencies) or with limited bandwidth, you can download the updates at a site with access, and zip them for easy transport and extraction at the non-connected site

USB/Port Security - We've added more management granularity by allowing you to create USB device white/blacklists based on either serial numbers or PID/VID combination.

If you are a Desktop Authority customer within maintenance, I highly recommend you update to the latest version.

If you've never tried Desktop Authority, you can download a 30-day evaluation.