What is the best way to run a custom app during an MDT UDI Task Sequence?

[Dsbloom]

Hello,

 

We have a very decentralized environment, and the UDI Wizard's OU selection page just isn't good enough to fit our needs, since I have to manually input every OU that a technician could choose when they build a machine. I have developed a .NET app that will query Active Directory and inject the proper XML to populate that drop down box with every OU in our forest, but the width of the dropdown box is too small, and our long AD paths won't fit.

 

So, I have written my own OU tree chooser, and I would like that to run before the UDI wizard pops up. This OU tree app allows a technician to select an OU to build the machine in, and then injects that OU into the UDI_Wizard_Config.xml file, so that the UDI wizard and the task sequence knows to put the machine in the chosen OU. My questions are:

1. What is the best way to run this app? As a package? As a command line from a share?
   
2. How can I modify files in the MDT Toolkit during a TS?
   

[anyweb]

you could run it as a Run Command Line step in the task sequence,

you could modify files in the MDT toolkit by referencing the file(s) itself via the MDT path called %scriptroot% (where the scripts are stored) or %toolroot% (the root of the MDT toolkit package) however I havnt tried modifying files directly in there, it might be best to point to an 'external' path and modify a file there instead as every time you use the toolkit package any modified files would be replaced with those from the MDT toolkit itself