BDD 2007 - Time saving Tips - How To quickly test rules

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When creating rules within BDD I find that it can take alot of time to tune them to provide the results that I am looking for.  Each time I make a change I need to restart the entire build process to see if rules have the desired effect.

It is however possible to run BDD rule processing manually on a computer without needing to completely rebuild a machine. The following process is invaluable in configuring and troubleshooting rule processing within BDD.

The rules that are applied to a particular computer are gathered together using a script called “ZTIGather.vbs” in conjunction with “ZTIGather.xml”.  These scripts can be run directly without the needing to launch the entire BDD process. 

The steps below detail this process. These can be run when the computer is running the host operating system or WinPE.

  1. Copy ZTIGather.wsf, ZTIGather.xml, ZTIUtility.vbs, CustomSettings.ini, and any user exit scripts to your workstation
  2. Remove C:\MININT directory if it already exists (to start clean)
  3. Execute "cscript.exe ZTIGather.wsf /debug:true"
  4. Inspect the log C:\MININT\SMSOSD\OSDLOGS\ZTIGather.log
  5. Modify CustomSettings.ini, user exit script(s) or database
  6. Go to step #2.

Note: The process does not make any changes to the client computer.

I have found that creating a batch file with the following commands helps speed up this process.

rmdir c:\minint /s /q

cscript ZTIGather.wsf /debug:true

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