OSD Application installs

Question

Hello, I work at an MSP and I am looking to get ConfigMGR set up to do our OS imaging to replace WDS. Currently I create base images with our apps in them and update them in WDS, my hope with ConfigMGR was to be able to set up applications there and any scripts we run there and have them run as part of the task sequence. I have the base OS install working fine; however when I attempt to add an Application install step to this, it does not install any applications. When checking the log on the client, I do not see it record that step (seems to stop before "Setup Operating System" in fact). I do know that these are confirmed in the task sequence the machine uses, because when I initially added it I received an error regarding the source not being available. (this was due to the apps not being pushed to the distribution point).

What should I check to get these working? I would like to decommission our WDS as soon as I can, due to the time it takes to update the images there vs ConfigMGR.

Answer 1

In order to install apps, packages run custom scripts, you need the ConfigMgr agent installed in the TS. Install the OS (use vanilla image), install the configmgr agent then install all the necessary apps.

Answer 2

Hi @Jesse Emmerich

One of the alternative options would be to use separated Task Sequence and call it after the deployement. You can see how a non-OS Task Sequence works here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/osd/deploy-use/create-a-task-sequence-for-non-operating-system-deployments

Otherwise, the reasons can be many, and it doesn't seem that you are receiving too much clues from the usual logs, so I would recommend the next Microsoft article with the troubleshoting approach in regards of Install Application Task Sequence Step:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/mem/configmgr/troubleshoot-install-application-step

Hope this helps with your query,

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Answer 3

Did some investigation, and i'm still not sure why but the last field in the SMTS Client log for "SMTSCurrentActionName" is a step in my task sequence called "Setup Windows and Configuration Manager". This task points at a package called "Windows 10 x64 Settings", which appears to just point at a folder in my OSD folder. This folder contains a customsettings.cfg and an Unattend.xml (Appears to be basically the autounattend settings for Windows Setup).

Apologies but I do not remember exactly how I made these, but it seems that any task after this point does not seem to work. Also curiously it does not seem to install the ConfigMgr client at all, would that potentially be why nothing happens further? I was unsure whether the client was required to perform any tasks in a sequence. When I set this up I was looking at different references for OS Deployment to try to figure out what I needed to do, it seems that some of these guides are geared towards machines that already have the ConfigMgr client installed, which may be why some of these things are having issue.

Anyone who has insight of why this is I would be welcome to. Thanks!