Forcing Updates to Self-Service-Installed Applications

[dverbern]

Hello All,

 

The company I work for is using SCCM 2012 SP1.

 

Most applications we onboard are set to "Available" as opposed to "Mandatory". Hence, they appear in the Software Self-Service catalog and users choose to install them, or not.

 

I have a scenario - just say a customer selects to install an application from Self-Service, that application is set to "Available".

The application installs for that customer on that system.

 

Now, some time later, I wish to send out an update for that particular Application, but only to those users who have selected to install it.

 

I'd rather not advise all affected customers via email to uninstall the application and then reinstall it.

 

Is there a mechanism whereby I can push out an update to an available, installed program, "silently" without having the customer do anything?

Is supersedence the trick here?

[AmrelMahdy]

make a Query on the computers that have your application installed , then push your updates on them

[dverbern]

Hello AmrelMahdy, thanks for your reply. I can certainly make a query, but I'm not sure how I would go about pushing out updates. More detail appreciated.

 

Actually, my problem is creating a query.

 

For most applications, there is an MSI involved and an entry in Add/Remove Programs is created.

That isn't the case for the script I have deployed.

 

Does anyone know how I can track whether an application has been installed? I can't check Add/Remove Programs because no entry is created.

Others have suggested creating a registry entry when the program has been installed, is that a recommended way to do it? I could then check for the existence of said registry key?

[jkabaseball]

If you have software inventory on, you could use that with the EXE (or what ever file extension). The other idea I thought of would be using DCM.