Shopping 6.1

Applications may be defined as being centrally administered or branch administered. Centrally administered applications are defined entirely using the Shopping Admin Console whereas branch administered applications are initially created using the Shopping Admin Console but its approval and publication must be completed by the branch administrator (see branch shopping).

Shopping applications can be set to require approval before delivery. The approval can either be application-based, where the approvers are set explicitly for the application, or it can be computer category-based, where the approvers are determined according to the computer the user shops from.

When more than one approver is defined for an application, you can choose if the application can be approved by any one of the approvers or must be approved by the whole chain of approvers. When an application is created that does not require approval, approvers are not notified.

Shopping supports application license management. The license count is internally managed by Shopping but can be set to initial values and re-synced from Configuration Manager using the application's Add/Remove Programs entry.

Shopping supports application rental from initial request through to automatic uninstallation once the rental period is finished. Users are able to request extension periods and the whole process is subject to the normal approval process. Application rental is only available for Configuration Manager applications or non-Configuration Manager Applications that are related to AD group membership rental.

There is an optional cost attribute associated with an application, if the cost is set it will be visible to both the user and the approver. The cost is displayed in the currency set on the Shopping Central server.

When a user logs on to a particular computer, what they see is defined by a combination of the User Categories (defining the availability to the user) and the Computer Categories (availability for the computer).

User Categories lets you group applications for presentation in the Shopping Web interface. You can create User Categories that are visible to all users or you can determine which users can see the category based on their AD credentials. There is a special category called Miscellaneous which is a catchall for any application that is not explicitly associated with any user-defined User Categories. This Shopping defined category is visible to all users.

Computer Categories enables you to tailor application approval and availability according to a computer's AD entry, AD group membership or OU membership. The Shopping administrator first creates a Computer Category, selecting computers to associate with it.

When using centrally administrated applications, the Shopping administrator defines a pool of central approvers that is associated with the computer category. When a centrally administrated application is configured to use computer category approval and associated with the Computer Category, the approvers for the application are selected from its pool of central approvers.

When using branch administrated applications, the Shopping administrator associates branch administrators with the computer category. It then becomes the responsibility of the branch administrator to maintain the pool of local branch approvers. The branch administrator also defines whether a particular branch administrated application is made available to branch users and selects branch approvers associated with the application.

Finally, when a user requests a particular computer category application from a particular computer, the approvers associated with the application via the computer category are used. This enables location-based approval systems to be easily set up. For example, in an enterprise with divisions in the UK and the USA, two AD Computer Groups could be defined: one for computers in the UK and another for computers in the USA.

Then in Shopping, one computer category could be created to associate the UK Computer Group with UK-based approvers and another to associate the USA computer group with USA-based approvers. Shopping applications could then be published to the Computer Categories and approvers selected for the application in each category. When a user requests one of these applications on a UK machine, approval is sought from a UK approver and from a US machine, US approval.

The Shopping module of the 1E Client also provides Windows Servicing Assistant (WSA) which guides users through the preparation and execution of an OS deployment. It is a client-based wizard that enables users in the office or working remotely over VPN to initiate an OS upgrade or OS refresh (wipe-and-load) or to migrate data, settings and applications from an old PC to a replacement PC at their convenience. WSA Applications are managed through the Shopping Admin console.

WSA features have the following 1E product dependencies:

Customers that have purchased the WSA license can use Shopping, Nomad, and Application Migration, and can therefore take full advantage of the all WSA functionality.

The following lists are combinations of products compatible with Shopping 6.1:

The following WSA features are available with the above product versions.