Application Management and Patching
Deploy Your Own Custom Software Package via Application Manager
Application Manager assists companies in patching and managing broadly distributed third-party software. We encounter numerous organizations that also need to manage custom software packaging. Thankfully, Application Manager enables custom app management via the Application Manager Portal. The custom application package can then, in turn, be deployed on desired devices (groups/collections), with a desired schedule, using Application Manager’s deployment processes.
Custom Software Packaging before Application Manager
Before Recast Software added custom application packaging capabilities, most of our customers had previously deployed the most common applications within Application Manager (apps on the Supported Applications list). Then, for anything more specialized or custom, they had packaged/scripted it themselves and deployed it straight through their deployment system (MECM / Intune). Today, Application Manager enables custom application packaging within the Application Manager portal itself.
Those users whose custom software receives frequent version updates or those who have several environments integrated into Software Manager will especially value this capability. Aapo Kettunen of Recast Software adds, “MSP customers greatly benefit from this capability: they can add the software they want to a hundred end customer environments at once, if needed. This saves dozens of hours of work compared to deploying the software to each of these environments manually.”
Custom Software Package Details
The feature itself works in MECM and Intune integrations, but not in WSUS integrations. The installation media can be in MSI or EXE form, and the MSTs and installation media’s other additional files can be included in the same package, if needed. The application’s identification rule can be the MSI package’s product code, or, alternatively, the information of a folder, file, or register on the device. For your own application, we’ll also configure installation and uninstallation commands, and depending on the application, you can also configure different settings and installation behavior.
We’ve also taken the release of new versions into account: when importing a software’s next version, deployment will automatically align with the previously configured deployment process, and Application Manager will of course delete any old versions and deployments of the software. As a general remark, using this feature requires a good level of knowledge on packaging/deployment/scripting. You can find detailed instructions on how to use the new custom applications feature in our Knowledge Base.
Learn More
Application Manager enables companies to streamline application management and third-party patching. To dig deeper into the feature set, read about Application Manager here or reach out to request a quote.
