Hiding (and showing) the task sequence progress dialog box
fThe task sequencer used in MDT 2010 and ConfigMgr 2007 is designed to show you at all times what’s going on with your task sequence:
As a result, it forces this dialog to be on the top of all other windows, which can be annoying in some situations because you want to get this out of the way. I’ve seen various solutions for this, typically that just move the dialog out of the way (to the edge of the screen, off the screen, etc.). But there’s a much easier way to do this: you can just tell this dialog to close itself using a very simple script:
' Hide the progress dialog
Set oTSProgressUI = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI")
oTSProgressUI.CloseProgressDialog
Set oTSProgressUI = Nothing
That causes the progress dialog to close (not surprisingly) – at least until it is told to update the progress, something that would typically happen at the start of the next step. So it’s only gone temporarily, but that’s OK – in most cases, you just want it to be gone for one step anyway, so have that step run a VBScript that hides the dialog, does its work, and then exits.
If you did want the progress dialog to show up again before the next step, you can force a progress update. If you are referencing the MDT ZTIUtility.vbs script, this is pretty simple too because it already has a function to do this. Just include logic like this:
' Report progress to get the dialog to show up again
oLogging.ReportProgress "Done", 100
If you aren’t using ZTIUtility.vbs, you can add some logic like this:
Public Function OpenProgressDialog
Dim oProgress
Dim uStep
Dim uMaxStep' Try to create the progress UI object
On Error Resume Next
Set oProgress = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI")
If Err then
Err.Clear
Exit Function
End if
On Error Goto 0' Update the progress
On Error Resume Next
uStep = CLng(oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSNextInstructionPointer"))
uMaxStep = CLng(oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSInstructionTableSize"))
Call oProgress.ShowTSProgress(oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSOrgName"), oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSPackageName"), oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSCustomProgressDialogMessage"), oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSCurrentActionName"), (uStep), (uMaxStep))On Error Goto 0
' Dispose of the object
Set oProgress = Nothing
End Function
If using ZTIUtility, the complete script could look like this:
<job id="Scripting201">
<script language="VBScript" src="ZTIUtility.vbs"/>
<script language="VBScript">' Hide the progress dialog
Set oTSProgressUI = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI")
oTSProgressUI.CloseProgressDialog
Set oTSProgressUI = Nothing' <Do your work here>
' Show the progress dialog (using one of these methods) if you don't want to wait
oLogging.ReportProgress "Done", 100
' <Maybe do some more work>
</script>
</job>
If you aren’t using ZTIUtility.vbs, it gets a little longer:
<job id="Scripting201">
<script language="VBScript">' Hide the progress dialog
Set oTSProgressUI = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI")
oTSProgressUI.CloseProgressDialog
Set oTSProgressUI = Nothing' <Do your work here>
' Show the progress dialog (using one of these methods) if you don't want to wait
OpenProgressDialog
' <Maybe do some more work>
' The OpenProgress Dialog method gets the dialog to show up again
Public Function OpenProgressDialog
Dim oProgress
Dim uStep
Dim uMaxStep' Try to create the progress UI object
On Error Resume Next
Set oProgress = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI")
If Err then
Err.Clear
Exit Function
End if
On Error Goto 0' Update the progress
On Error Resume Next
uStep = CLng(oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSNextInstructionPointer"))
uMaxStep = CLng(oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSInstructionTableSize"))
Call oProgress.ShowTSProgress(oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSOrgName"), oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSPackageName"), oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSCustomProgressDialogMessage"), oEnvironment.Item("_SMSTSCurrentActionName"), (uStep), (uMaxStep))On Error Goto 0
' Dispose of the object
Set oProgress = Nothing
End Function
</script>
</job>