You will need to plan for the kind of application you want to use to call into Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS), such as a Web control console or another custom application. Also related to this is the method by which you will pass XML requests into MPS, which you can do using any of the following:

  • ProvTest.exe command-line tool - You can submit XML requests to MPS by running ProvTest.exe at the command line, where you use a text document containing the appropriate XML request content as the target of the executable. See the MPS Operations Guide "Managing Microsoft Provisioning Framework from the Command Line" topic for more information about using ProvTest.exe. You can locate the MPS Operations Guide on Microsoft Hosting Solutions for Service Providers at: \Service Provisioning\MPS\MPF\help\opsguide.chm.
  • MPS Web Services - You can submit XML requests to MPS from a Web-based application over the Internet using the MPS Web Services Interfaces. See the Microsoft Provisioning System SDK for information about submitting XML requests using the Web Services.
  • An existing Web-based user interface - If you have an existing UI, it must be capable of calling the MPF COM Client, for instance with Active Server Pages (ASP) code.
  • A custom application - If you have an existing application that you want to use or one that you want to develop for sending XML requests to MPS, it must be capable of calling the MPS .NET Client Wrapper. You can write applications such as this in C#, C++, or Microsoft Visual Basic .NET.
  • Microsoft ASP.Net Web Service - You can use the Web Service to submit XML requests into MPS and take advantage of numerous preconfigured and selectable XML requests provided with the service.
    See Microsoft Provisioning System SDK to learn how to get started using this service.

For more information see:

  • Run XML Provisioning Requests for more information about:
    • Procedures that you can use to submit XML requests to MPS from any of the listed sources.
    • How to call the MPF COM Client.
    • How to use the Mpfcomcreateuser.vbs VBScript, which programmatically creates an XML request, calls the MPF COM Client, and submits the request to the Provisioning Engine.
  • Microsoft Provisioning System SDK to learn how to use the MPS .NET Client Wrapper to call the MPF COM Client from a .NET application.