SCCM Client Center

Hi all,

Roger Zander’s SCCM Client Center is a free tool for managing and fixing remote System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) clients right from the comfort of your computer.

I’ve used this great tool for some time now in many different environments, and I can’t say how useful it has been in troubleshooting client computers. You can remotely find out the clients cache location, size, and what's in it, and also find out what packages are advertised to a computer and rerun the advertisement if needed. The list goes on of what you can do with this free tool. 

And now a bit of interesting - I saw that some of the admins insist that the latest version of SCCM Client Center is 2.0.4 which was released back on 2011-10-06. And this version really exists despite the fact that in Roger Zander's GitHub repository the latest version of SCCM Client Center is 1.0.7.2. That's the pun!

Personally, I suggest you use version 1.0.7.2, it is also freeware, but unlike 2.0.4, it has more functionality, as well as a window at the bottom where the corresponding Powershell script is displayed for each command.

Running Executions

The Running Executions function group is broken down into three sub tabs SMS/SCCM Jobs, Processes, and Services. Once you have connected to an SCCM Client you can use these tabs to display, start, and stop all current running SCCM jobs, running services, or processes. You can also view all jobs that are in queue and see what might be holding up that job like a file download for example. I know what you’re thinking; well I can do all that with the SCCM Console, and that is true but, the problem is that SCCM won’t put it all together in package like SCCM Client Center does.

Event Monitor

When troubleshooting SCCM clients, it might be necessary to get deep into the weeds. That is what makes having the Event Monitor function group readily accessible in one all encompassing application such huge time saver. It allows you to access the multiple client logs from one easy to use interface.

Inventory

What SCCM tool would be complete without an effective inventory function, and SCCM Client Center delivers. You can either view an interactive inventory of a client's installed applications by querying its WMI classes, or you can choose to pull that application list from the SCCM database. Since it leverages WMI on the client there is almost nothing that we can’t pull from the client that we might need to troubleshoot or report on. If you are troubleshooting patch compliance issues and believe me you will at some point. You can use the inventory function to see what patches have been installed or which ones still need to be installed. Plus you can also open up the WindowsUpdate.log file directly from SCCM Client Center saving you time and desktop clutter.

Advertisements

Here you can view all of the applied advertisement policies and even rerun advertisements on the selected client. You can also view when a package was last ran and whether or not it ran successfully , and if available you can extract failure codes to help diagnose installation failures. Some SCCM environments can get really complicated as different departments roles and functions vary over time. Thus it becomes of upmost importance that Maintenance Windows are adhered and managed as needed. SCCM Client Center allows you to do that by letting you view all applicable Maintenance Windows. If necessary, you can even delete or create new Maintenance Windows from the Advertisements function group as well.

Agent Actions

Finally we get to the Agent Actions function group. In my experience most SCCM client issues can be fixed by either reinstalling or repairing the SCCM client, and you can do that right from the SCCM Client Center console. If that doesn’t do the trick then you might have to repair or recreate the WMI repository. That can also be done from this same function group.

In the SCCM Client Center, you can perform many other administration functions, as well as install software from the RuckZuck repository. Thanks to Roger Zander, we have a free multifunctional SCCM Client Center to manage stations in the SCCM environment, especially when the administrator did not want to share the SCCM console with us.

Good luck.