You can use scripting to manage SMS more efficiently and to create solutions to better serve your organization’s needs. SMS scripting offers the following advantages:
- Scripts can be used with scheduling services, alert systems,
and other similar system operations.
- You can run scripts that automate your SMS operations.
- Scripts are compact and therefore easy to transfer and
edit.
- Fully debugged scripts reduce the risk of human error for
repeated operations.
Scenarios in which scripting SMS operations can be useful include the following:
- When you have many sites in your SMS hierarchy and it is too
time-consuming and error-prone to manually make changes or verify
settings on all the sites.
- When you frequently create, modify, or remove SMS objects such
as collections, advertisements, packages, queries, site systems, or
reports.
- When you have special needs that are difficult or impossible
for an SMS administrator to do with the SMS Administrator console
or the available SMS tools.
- When you have a task that you must complete for some of your
SMS administrators but that requires privileges that you do not
want to give to those administrators. You can create a scheduled
task to routinely run a script with the necessary credentials.
Scripting References
If you have not previously written any scripting code, see the following chapters of the Windows 2000 Scripting Guide to familiarize yourself with the concepts and technologies required for scripting SMS: