[Roddy Gelberty]

Varun, can you please confirm which one of the following statements are true?

• You use a standalone MDT infrastructure and not SCCM.
• You use an SCCM infrastructure.

Can you also clarify what you mean, when you say ‘save the entered data to C:‘. Do you mean the selected choice?. If yes? in what format?
Do you have to use ‘.ini’ as a the input source?

[Roddy Gelberty]

Hi Bobby,
Yes I am using a standalone MDT infrastructure and not SCCM.
Once the user inputs the data into Wizard, if it can save the data to the ini file and have it saved it C:\Directory after applying the image, or if there is any other way to do it.

[Topaz George]

@Rocky . Furter to Bobby’s questions, can you also clarify what you mean by ‘will be available at the time of installation‘ Will you be adding conditions to your Task Sequence steps using the values you collect from the UI (User Interface)?

[Roddy Gelberty]

Sure Paul,
Please find the fields example from one of the INI file, the information which goes in
to these ini files like Store Address, IP address these information is
only available to enter by field technician at the time of Deployment.
[General]store_number =00000address =city =Some CityCountry =USProvince =N/Acontact =Store Managertype =Cpetrol =0timezone =GMTdaylight =1remarks =cc_connect_type =4credit =1market =0000

Three .ini files have fields like above, the information which goes in to these ini files like Store Address, IP address these information is only available to enter by field technician at the time of Deployment, once these .ini files are saved with updated information to C:\Store directory on 2016 hyper-v server, we have power shell scripts in place which will inject these .ini files to VM.

[Roddy Gelberty]

Thanks Varun. For SCCM users we always recommend our Free SCCM task sequence orchestrator which has 18 extension attributes that can be assigned entries that originally go into the INI file. But since you use MDT, the process from the start to finish has to be done using PowerShell, leveraging the power of ‘Windows Forms’ or ‘Windows Presentation Foundation’.

Step 1: Create a Form with all the required fields. See a very short example below.

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
[System.Windows.Forms.Application]::EnableVisualStyles()
$storeInfo = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Form
$storeInfo.ClientSize = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(594,113)
$storeInfo.text = "Store Information Window"
$storeInfo.TopMost = $false
$storeInfo.BackColor = [System.Drawing.ColorTranslator]::FromHtml("#ffffff")
$storeAddress = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Label
$storeAddress.text = "Store Address : "
$storeAddress.AutoSize = $false
$storeAddress.width = 91
$storeAddress.height = 6
$storeAddress.location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(10,68)
$storeAddress.Font = New-Object System.Drawing.Font('Microsoft Sans Serif',10)
$IPAddress = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Label
$IPAddress.text = "IP Address : "
$IPAddress.AutoSize = $false
$IPAddress.width = 108
$IPAddress.height = 5
$IPAddress.location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(10,20)
$IPAddress.Font = New-Object System.Drawing.Font('Microsoft Sans Serif',10)
$TextBox1 = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.TextBox
$TextBox1.multiline = $false
$TextBox1.width = 430
$TextBox1.height = 20
$TextBox1.location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(145,15)
$TextBox1.Font = New-Object System.Drawing.Font('Microsoft Sans Serif',10)
$TextBox2 = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.TextBox
$TextBox2.multiline = $false
$TextBox2.width = 430
$TextBox2.height = 20
$TextBox2.location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(145,61)
$TextBox2.Font = New-Object System.Drawing.Font('Microsoft Sans Serif',10)
$storeInfo.controls.AddRange(@($storeAddress,$IPAddress,$TextBox1,$TextBox2))

Add extra fields like text boxes and combo boxes to suite your needs. This article can guide you in the right direction.

Step 2: Read your INI files and pre-populate necessary fields.

function Get-IniContent ($filePath)
{
    $ini = @{}
    switch -regex -file $FilePath
    {
        "^\[(.+)\]" # Section
        {
            $section = $matches[1]
            $ini[$section] = @{}
            $CommentCount = 0
        }
        "^(;.*)$" # Comment
        {
            $value = $matches[1]
            $CommentCount = $CommentCount + 1
            $name = "Comment" + $CommentCount
            $ini[$section][$name] = $value
        }
        "(.+?)\s*=(.*)" # Key
        {
            $name,$value = $matches[1..2]
            $ini[$section][$name] = $value
        }
    }
    return $ini
}

The above script was taken from Microsoft dev blog.

Step 3 : Read the values from the ‘PowerShell’ Form and write it to the INI file on your SYSTEM drive.

function Out-IniFile($InputObject, $FilePath)
{
    $outFile = New-Item -ItemType file -Path $Filepath
    foreach ($i in $InputObject.keys)
    {
        if (!($($InputObject[$i].GetType().Name) -eq "Hashtable"))
        {
            #No Sections
            Add-Content -Path $outFile -Value "$i=$($InputObject[$i])"
        } else {
            #Sections
            Add-Content -Path $outFile -Value "[$i]"
            Foreach ($j in ($InputObject[$i].keys | Sort-Object))
            {
                if ($j -match "^Comment[\d]+") {
                    Add-Content -Path $outFile -Value "$($InputObject[$i][$j])"
                } else {
                    Add-Content -Path $outFile -Value "$j=$($InputObject[$i][$j])"
                }

            }
            Add-Content -Path $outFile -Value ""
        }
    }
}

The above script was taken from Microsoft dev blog.

If you run the PowerShell Form during the execution of the task sequence, remember to do the following.

$TSProgressUI = new-object -comobject Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI
$TSProgressUI.CloseProgressDialog()
$TSProgressUI = $null

The above commands turn off the progress UI.

Hope this helps.

[Roddy Gelberty]

Thank you Bobby!
I appreciate it. I will check it out.

[Roddy Gelberty]

@bobby-brown
Bobby,
Quick question, Do i have to treat step 1, step 2, step 3 as separate powershell scripts?
for instance, form in step 1 goes as form.ps1, then read ini files and pre-populate as readini.ps1
and write form to the ini file as WriteFormtoINI.ps1, and set them as run powershell scripts in the task sequence?

Thank you!

[Roddy Gelberty]

You could put it all in one script.
In short,

• Pre-populate necessary fields from INI.
• Operator fills in additional details.
• Write back to the same INI or different INI (depending on your needs).

Hope that helps.

[Roddy Gelberty]

Thanks a lot Bobby!