SMS Tutorials :: SMS Collection

When an SMS administrator deploys a software application (package) to a group of computers (collection), an SMS object called an advertisement is used.  As mentioned earlier, advertisements do not use AD security groups directly.   Instead,  packages are advertised to an SMS Collection. 

A Collection is an query-based, SMS-specific grouping of systems (computers).  The query that is used to define an SMS collection can be based on any of an enormous number of system criteria.  Most collections that are used by ITS will simply be based on a security group created especially for this purpose.  For example, a collection would be based on a security group called SMS-ITS-SPA-ECM-Systems.  All of the computer accounts that are to be managed via SMS in this department would be members of this group.

Once a collection is created, it will synchronize its own membership by rerunning the query on all of the computer objects that SMS has discovered.  This is a configurable for each collection and typically occurs once daily.

Creating an SMS Collection

{To see a Flash Demo of this procedure, click here}

1. To create a new SMS Collection, right-click on Collections in the SMS Console, then New | Collection.

2. This collection will contain all SMS-managed machines in the fictional ASDF Department.  The "(S)" at the end denotes that it is a collection built from an Active Directory security group.  Click on the Membership Rules tab.
   
   
    

3. In this step, you need to create the query that the collection is based on.  Click the button shown below to do this.  (The button to the left of the highlighted button is to directly add computers to a collection.  ITS does not recommend using this method because as machine names change or cease to existence on the network otherwise, old machine names will be included in the collection that no longer exist.)
   
   
    

4. You should name the query accordingly, limit the collection so that it will only search within the All Systems collection and click Edit Query Statement...  (Limiting the collection to the All Systems collection reduces the time and bandwidth required to query this collection.  Computer accounts get added to the the All Systems collection automatically when they are discovered. )
   
   IMPORTANT:  The collection that contains all of the systems within your department will be called the root departmental collection and is created by the Enterprise Client Management group.  When creating a root departmental collection, the collection is limited to the All Systems collection.  However, subsequent collections should be limited to either the root departmental collection OR a collection based off on an Active Directory security group.
   
   
    

5. Click the Criteria tab.  You now need to create the query statement.  Do this by clicking on the "starburst" as Microsoft calls it.
   
   
    

6. In this step, you are defining the criteria that the query is based on.  Click the Select button.
   
   
    

7. The Attribute class is the category of the specific criteria you want to base your query on.  In this case, the attribute class is System Resource.  The Attribute is System Group Name since this query will be based on an Active Directory security group.  Click OK.
   
   
    

8. Now that you've chose the criteria that the query is based on, you need to choose the value that the criteria equals (or some other logical operator) in order to be added into the collection.  This query statement defines a collection in which members are all groups of the SMS-ASDF-Systems security group.  Click OK.
   
   
    

9. This is your query statement displayed in the Query Statement Properties dialogue window.  Click OK.
   
   
    

10. This is your Query in the Collection Properties dialogue box.  By default, collections will update every day.  If you would like to change this, click the Schedule button (shown in next step).  Otherwise, click OK.
    
    
     

11. In this window, you can change the update time and frequency.

This collection is now active but will take some time to add members.  Depending on network bandwidth, time of day etc., the collection can take up to 30 minutes to fully populate.  You can see the members of a collection by clicking on the name of the collection in the left pane of the SMS Console.  The members will be displayed in the right pane of the SMS Console.

Now that a collection is created, you can use SMS to send software packages to the computers that are members of it. 
 

Creating an SMS Subcollection

A Subcollection, as the name implies, is a collection that is a subset of another.  To create a subcollection of the All ASDF Systems (S) collection, you would follow the usual steps as outlines above except for two differences. 

1. Instead of limiting the collection to All Systems, as in step 4, you would limit the subcollection to All ASDF Systems (S).  If the query in the subcollection is to include any Windows XP machines it finds and it is limited to All ASDF Systems (S), the subcollection will find all Windows XP Systems in the ASDF security Group.

2. Logically, the above-described collection is now a subcollection of the All ASDF Systems (S) group, but it will be displayed in the SMS Console at the same level in the hierarchy as its parent collection.  While functionally, there is no consequence to this, it should be made to appear as a subset of the parent collection.  This illustrates that one collection is a subcollection of another.  To make the subcollection appear in this way, right-click the parent collection | New | Link to Collection.  In the window that appears, select the subcollection and click OK.

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