How to Add an Operating System Deployment Task Sequence Action

Article
05/03/2011

Applies To: System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2

An operating system deployment task sequence action is added to a task sequence, in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, by creating an instance of an SMS_TaskSequence_Action derived class and then adding it to the steps of the task sequence.

Note

Configuration Manager 2007 has a number of built-in actions that you can use. For example the command-line action class is SMS_TaskSequence_RunCommandLineAction. These classes derive from the SMS_TaskSequence_Action class.

SMS_TaskSequenceAction derives from the SMS_TaskSequence_Step class, which is the base class for both actions and groups. The task sequence stores its steps in an array of SMS_TaskSequence_Step, thus allowing actions and groups to be stored together.

To add a task sequence action

Set up a connection to the SMS Provider. For more information see, About the SMS Provider in Configuration Manager.
Create a task sequence (SMS_TaskSequence) object. For more information, see How to Create an Operating System Deployment Task Sequence.
Create an SMS_TaskSequenceAction derived class instance, for example, SMS_TaskSequence_RunCommandLine, for the action you want.
Populate the action as appropriate.
Add the action to the task sequences steps. This is stored the SMS_TaskSequence class Steps property.

Example

The following example method creates a command-line action and adds it to the supplied task sequence.

For information about calling the sample code, see Calling Configuration Manager Code Snippets.

Sub AddTaskSequenceActionCommandLine(connection, taskSequence, name, description)   
    
    Dim steps
    Dim action  
    
    Set action = connection.Get("SMS_TaskSequence_RunCommandLineAction").SpawnInstance_
    
    action.CommandLine = "cmd /c Echo Hello"
    action.Name=name
    action.Description=description
    action.Enabled=True
    action.ContinueOnError=False
  
      If IsNull(taskSequence.Steps) Then
        steps = Array(action)
        taskSequence.Steps=steps
    Else
        steps= Array(taskSequence.Steps)
        ReDim steps (UBound (taskSequence.Steps)+1) 
        taskSequence.Steps(UBound(steps))=action
    End if  

End Sub

public IResultObject AddTaskSequenceActionCommandLine(
    WqlConnectionManager connection, 
    IResultObject taskSequence,
    string name, 
    string description)
{
    try
    {
        // Create the new step.
        IResultObject ro;

        ro = connection.CreateEmbeddedObjectInstance("SMS_TaskSequence_RunCommandLineAction");
        ro["CommandLine"].StringValue = @"cmd /c Echo Hello";

        ro["Name"].StringValue = name;
        ro["Description"].StringValue = description;
        ro["Enabled"].BooleanValue = true;
        ro["ContinueOnError"].BooleanValue = false;

        // Add the step to the task sequence.
        List<IResultObject> array = taskSequence.GetArrayItems("Steps");

        array.Add(ro);

        taskSequence.SetArrayItems("Steps", array);

        return ro;
    }
    catch (SmsException e)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Failed to add action: " + e.Message);
        throw;
    }
}

The example method has the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
connection	Managed: WqlConnectionManager VBScript: SWbemServices	A valid connection to the SMS Provider.
taskSequence	Managed: IResultObject VBScript: SWbemObject	A valid task sequence (SMS_TaskSequence).
Name	Managed: String VBScript: String	A name for the new action.
Description	Managed: String VBScript: String	A description for the action.

Compiling the Code

This C# example requires:

Namespaces

System

System.Collections.Generic

System.Text

Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider

Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider.WqlQueryEngine

Assembly

microsoft.configurationmanagement.managementprovider

adminui.wqlqueryengine

Robust Programming

For more information about error handling, see About Configuration Manager Errors.

Security

For more information about securing Configuration Manager applications, see About Securing Configuration Manager Applications.

Share via