Task Sequence step for end user prompt / countdown?

Question

Hello all – We need to in remove some software, but give the user notice on-screen before and after. When the software installs, it must be in silent mode (or the user will be able to cancel it.) We’d like to have a task sequence that:

1. Notification pops up with something like “This software will install.” Then have a countdown before it proceeds to the next
   TS step, program uninstall. And a ‘Continue’ button where the user can select Okay and it will then proceed to the next task
   sequence step vs. waiting for the countdown to hit 0.
2. Software uninstalls.
3. Another prompt to the user that simply says, ‘Update Complete.’

I searched for available task sequence variables for message prompts/countdowns and all I could find were ones that restart the PC or part of OSD upgrades (not applicable here).

Do any of you know other TS variable commands or perhaps PowerShell script that would do this?

Answer 1

Take a look at the 2 scripts that I posted in this thread and see if you can tweak them to work for you.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/246173/scheduled-task-to-launch-powershell-script-in-syst.html

It's a little different from your description, but it might work better for you if the install task needs to run with admin/system rights and the desktop user is not an admin.

Basically the 2 scripts just look for files in a temp folder (or file content) that indicate what to do next. It shouldn't be too hard to add additional steps.

There is no countdown functionality, you'll have to add that.

http://blog.dbsnet.fr/countdown-in-a-powershell-gui

Answer 2

There's nothing built-in for this. There are a couple of possible paths to follow although there is the added complexity during a TS that it runs as the local SYSTEM account and thus cannot directly show UI on the interactive desktop.

Have you considered instead simply using a script wrapper from within an Application to perform your tasks? This is straight-forward and allows you to present UI to the end-user.

Answer 3

For my parts 1 and 3 above, I was able to create a PowerShell script and it worked like I wanted. Great. Part 2, the uninstall, is a package. Thought about having all of these in a task sequence but then Jason pointed out this won't work as the TS runs in system context. Instead of a task sequence, I chained all 3 packages in the order I need to them to run. That worked!! Prompts show up and software is removed.

Chaining programs isn't elegant but might do the job. Script wrapper could work, but I’m not familiar with that.

However, I need to tweak things a bit as when each script runs it shows the command box window for both PowerShell scripts and the setup.exe uninstall program and is shown to the end user. How can I hide those, but not the PowerShell dialog boxes the script shows the user? For each program, I have it set to Run Normal, allow user to interact with program, run with admin rights and program can run whether or not a user is logged on and on the deployment I have it set to Allow users to run the program independently of assignments.

One last thing is when all the chained packages run, it shows up in software center and displays toast notifications. How can we prevent this?

Thanks everyone for the help!

Answer 4

As others have suggested, there is nothing available to achieve this natively using the TS method. However, you can use PSADT and\or ServiceUI to set things up. Look it up.