Runbook alternatives to IE + Silverlight

Question

I get it that as long as Windows 10 is supported, that IE will be supported from a security patching perspective. However, that is not stopping my department from doing everything in their power to prevent users from using IE going forward and moving to Edge or Chrome as the only browsers that we will support.

We have a few apps that we are working with vendors on where their apps only work in IE and we are working with those vendors to make their apps compatible with Edge or Chrome. I am being tasked with figuring out how to let my users of various SCO Runbooks continue to function once we decide that IE + Silverlight are no longer acceptable to be used. And although I don't think we can even disable iexplore.exe from running without breaking windows 10 we are going to come up with something to strongly discourage its use as a web browser.

So without IE + Silverlight, what are my options when it comes to the use of runbooks by my users?

Maybe some way for Powershell to interact with the Runbook Server(s), by taking user input and putting it into the Initialize data fields? Or some other form of a web form that is acceptable to interact directly with a runbook? Are there any other ways for users to input data that can be used by a runbook? Maybe a Sharepoint form since we are users of Sharepoint Online?

My other alternative is to just build a Windows 10 VM as a jumpbox of sorts with no internet access or anything. Maybe like a Kiosk and the only thing people can do is RDP to it and launch IE and use it to kick off their desired Runbook.

Of course the final option is to go to any competing applications that will do the same thing as SCO, without IE + Silverlight, but I am not even sure what competitors are out there, if any or how easy / difficult it would be to migrate my runbooks to a different platform.

Answer 1

Hi,

I just have been informed that Microsoft released on 10/20/2021 System Center Orchestrator 2019 Web Console & Web API:

• New WebConsole that works in modern browsers without Silverlight.
• New WebApi that is primarily used only by the new WebConsole.
• The WebApi uses Windows Authentication for all endpoints. Additionally, Folder and Runbook permissions set using the RunbookDesigner are honoured.
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=103552

The link from @Dmitry Zimin for the alternative console for Orchestrator that doesn't require Silverlight: https://github.com/pfzim/websco

Regards,
Stefan