There is documentation on the new, cool, stuff!
One way or another, the doc team has had a great month talking with customers – whether that’s at MMS, the MVP Summit, site visits, conferences, e-mail exchanges, or through the newsgroups. It's been a fun time for us to get reaquainted with old friends, and make some new ones. We’ve been listening to your feedback about Configuration Manager 2007, your priorities, and what the help documentation requires in order to be, well, helpful.
A recurring theme we came across was that customers didn’t know that we had documentation on the new features. In some cases, customers had spent hours trying to work out how to achieve a certain task, or understand how something worked, when there’s actually a help topic that addresses it. We haven’t been able to document everything in time for Beta 2, but we have documented a lot of things that customers needed help with, and having that information could have saved them a lot of time when they were testing the beta 2 version.
So here’s a quick guide into the Configuration Manager documentation that has been updated with the new, cool stuff you keep asking about:
For information about how Configuration Manager is bigger, better, bolder than SMS 2003, we have a "work in progress" What's New in Configuration Manager 2007 section, which provides some technical information on the differences between the two versions. Then you can browse or search within the documentation library for some of the new features such as:
- Internet-Based Client Management
- Desired configuration management
- Network Access Protection
- Wake On LAN
Then there are the features that were previously only available in feature packs:
And the much-loved new improvements to existing features, such as:
- Branch distribution points
- Maintenance windows
- Custom web sites
- Folders and search folders
- Blocking a client
In addition, check out the changes to one of our favorite features, software updates, that now has selective downloads to make more efficient use of bandwidth, software update deployments instead of advertisements, deployment templates to make deploying updates more efficient, and the software update point that integrates with WSUS.
And if you’re looking for information about native mode (PKI integration), a good place to start is Benefits of Using Native Mode and Deploying the PKI Certificates Required for Native Mode.
You might also find useful Configuration Manager Supported Configurations and Prerequisites for Installing Configuration Manager.
But don’t stop there – have a browse through or follow some of the links off these topics. Or better still, download the help file (SMSv4.chm) from the Connect site so that you can search on keywords you’ve heard in the presentations or seen in the product.
And if you’ve downloaded Beta 2 to try it out and haven’t a clue what the new UI options are, try pressing F1 – you might be surprised to find that the help is helpful. And if it isn’t, we want to know about it!
- Carol Bailey
This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties and confers no rights.