Custom Script Question

[majormalarky]

I have created a “local process command” which will take a selected computer and put it in maintenance mode in our System Center Configuration Manager for 10 minutes. This allows us to do maintenance (reboot, restart services, etc… ) and avoid any alerts on said computers.
Is there any way possible to add some sort of countdown timer on the grid for each computer this is running on so that we can have an idea of how much maintenance mode time is remaining?

[doug]

Countdown, no. But you can pop a message box on the target computers that says whatever you want, like “Maintenance will be ongoing until 11:45PM” etc.

‘Actions > Send message to logged-on users’

[doug]

Or are you saying you want the timer to appear on the BatchPatch computer? Or actually inside of BatchPatch? The short answer is no, there isn’t a built-in way to display a countdown-timer for each row inside of BatchPatch. But you could put a note inside of one of the notes columns for a BP row and put the end-time there for reference. Something like that anyway.

Or you could even conceivably maybe write a script that displays a countdown somehow, but that wouldn’t run inside of BP. So you would have to come up with a script that takes as its parameters hostname and start time. Then have that script display a countdown in a window. You’d then be able to call the script as a local command from inside of BP. Maybe something like that is possible. I’m not sure.

[majormalarky]

I was thinking of something inside of a column in batchpatch, similar to BP currently has the ping reply. I wasn’t sure if I created a countdown timer, if there was a way to drop that from the local command into the “Local Command Output Log”.
Maybe a note column displaying the time that the timer runs out would work, similar to how the “Reboot Messages” column states “Reboot Initiated successfully – ##:##:##”.
If you have a quick link to a blog post regarding updating columns or notes that would be great,otherwise I will be searching.

[doug]

You can just type directly into the notes field for a given row, or you can use ‘Actions > Modify category, description, location, notes, color, etc’ to put something in the notes column for many rows at the same time.

[majormalarky]

Can I update a Note Field from the Local Command and show the column if it isn’t visible?
Sorry for the onslaught of messages, and thank you for the help.

[doug]

No. We’ll consider something like this for a future version.

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