Contents

Ex 3 - Shopping 5.6 - Exploring the Shopping User Interfaces

Exercise Overview:

Exploring the Shopping User Interfaces

In this exercise, we will explore the components that make up the shopping solution. Shopping has two user interfaces.

  • The Shopping Administration Console is used by Shopping administrators to configure Shopping settings and to manage the objects (Applications, Approvers, User Categories, and Computer Categories) that make up the solution. It is an application that is typically installed on the Shopping Central server (it is a Feature of the Shopping Central installer) but can also be installed on admin workstations.
  • The Shopping portal is a web application used by all users to request items, monitor the progress of their requests, uninstall software and set their own preferences. For administrative users with designated roles, the Shopping Portal can also be used to approve requests, perform administration tasks and view reports.

To prepare for other exercises in the course, you will familiarize yourself with these user interfaces in this lab.

Exploring the Admin Console

In this exercise, you will familiarize yourself with the Shopping Admin Console, and complete some initial configuration.

Exploring the Shopping Admin Console

1ETRNAP

  1. On 1ETRNAP, close all applications and log off 1ETRN\AppInstaller (from the Start screen, click AppInstaller in the top-right corner and select Sign out), then log on as 1ETRN\ShoppingAdmin
    2. In the previous exercises, we used the installer account (1ETRN\AppInstaller) to install Shopping on 1ETRNAP. This account has local admin rights on the Application server (1ETRNAP), but this level of elevated rights is not necessary for using the Shopping Admin Console once the installation has completed. In this lab, you will use the ShoppingAdmin user account – this is a standard Domain User account that has been included in the Shopping. Admins group that you specified during the Shopping Central installation, so it has the necessary rights to use the full Shopping Admin console but has limited permissions on the actual server. This is consistent with the most common scenario in production environments.
  2. From the Start screen, start typing Shopping until Shopping Administration appears in the search results, then click on Shopping Administration in the search results to open the Shopping Administration Console


    3. You may want to pin the Shopping Administration shortcut to the Taskbar by right-clicking on the shortcut in the search results and selecting Pin to Taskbar.
  3. In the Shopping Admin Console, the left-hand pane (Database Explorer) shows a tree-view of the available management nodes
    4. As the logged-on user (1ETRN\ShoppingAdmin) is a member of the Shopping Admin group defined during installation, you can see all nodes in the console. Node security can be configured to restrict console users to just the nodes they need to perform their role.
  4. The table below summarizes the purpose of each node

    5. Node

    Description

    Sites

    The Sites node is used to identify ConfigMgr sites in Shopping. If a ConfigMgr site is not listed here, users or computers assigned to that site will only be able to see and request standard Applications (i.e. non SMS/ConfigMgr applications). The Shopping Central Installer will add the Principal Primary Site but all others in the hierarchy will need to be added through this node. Sites are used by Shopping to allow administrators to limit availability of Applications to clients assigned to specific ConfigMgr sites.

    Approvers

    Used to view and manage users that have been defined as Approvers. A user must be added as an Approver through this node before they can be selected as an approver for an Application.

    User Categories

    Used to manage User Categories. User Categories allow administrators to limit the availability of Applications to users that are members of specific AD security groups. Note that there is a Miscellaneous category already defined. Miscellaneous is the default category for any application that is not associated with any other User Categories. Applications in the Miscellaneous category are available to all users.

    Computer Categories

    Used to manage Computer Categories.  Computer Categories allow administrators to limit the availability of Applications to computers that are in specific AD Organizational Units (OUs) or security groups. Computer Categories are also used to delegate management of groups of computers to specific Shopping administrators (Branch Administration).

    Applications

    Used to manage Applications. In most cases, these define software applications, but Applications are actually any items that appear in the Shopping portal to be requested.

    Settings

    Used to configure Shopping.

    Node Security

    Used to manage user access to each node of the console. In an environment where administration is distributed, node security enables users to be given access only to the nodes that are relevant to their role.

    Event Log

    Provides an audit view of changes that have been made through the Shopping Console.

Restricting access to the Console

In this task, you will learn how to use Node Security to restrict what a user can do within the Shopping console. Specifically, you will grant the AppManager user access to just the Applications node in the Shopping console. You will also observe that defining node security in the Shopping console affects membership of the special groups introduced in Database Access groups in section 2.1 (ShoppingConsole_Admins, ShoppingConsole_Users and ShoppingConsole_SMSUsers).

1ETRNDC 


  1. On 1ETRNDC logged in as 1ETRN\Administrator, open Active Directory Users and Computers from the Start screen
  2. From the Users container, double-click the AppManager user account to open the user properties dialog box
  3. Select the Member Of tab and note which groups the AppManager account is currently a member of
  4. Close the AppManager Properties dialog box

1ETRNAP

  1. On 1ETRNAP, in the left pane of the Shopping Administration console select the Node Security node
  2. In the right-hand pane, right-click Applications and select Change Security…
  3. In the Node Security Properties dialog, click Add
  4. In the Select Users or Groups dialog, enter AppManager, click Check Names to validate the user then click OK
  5. In the Node Security Properties dialog, click OK

1ETRNDC 

  1. Return to Active Directory Users and Computers on 1ETRNDC and view the properties of the AppManager user account again
  2. On the Member Of tab, note that the AppManager user has now been added to the ShoppingConsole_Admins and ShoppingConsole_SMSUsers groups. These groups are associated with the database Roles that grant the necessary permissions in the Shopping and ConfigMgr databases to create and manage Applications (see Group Management on page to review these groups and database roles)

1ETRNAP

  1. Log on to 1ETRNAP as AppManager (log off ShoppingAdmin)
    2. Alternatively, you may use the Run as a different user option to launch the Shopping admin console as 1ETRN\AppManager without having to log 1ETRN\ShoppingAdmin off 1ETRNAP.
  2. Start the Shopping Administration console from the Start menu
  3. Note that only the Applications node is available to the AppManager user

Exploring the Web Portal

In this exercise, you will familiarize yourself with the web portal and note how the interface may change depending on the logged-on user.

View the portal as a general user

You will now log on to one of the workstations as a general user and explore the user interface.

1ETRNW71

  1. Log on to 1ETRNW71 as 1ETRN\user, open Internet Explorer and go to http://appstore
    2. Set this as your home page as you will be using it a lot.
  2. The default page is the Shopping Home Page. As we have not defined any Applications in Shopping yet, the page is empty, but you will at least observe the Search box that allows users to search for Applications once you have started to add them

  1. At the top right you will see Shopping has identified the current user and computer

  1. Click the MY SOFTWARE button next to the user/machine in the ribbon to open the My Software page. This page is not particularly interesting now, but as you progress through the course it will list all the Applications that have been installed through Shopping and over time, it will provide an indication of how frequently each Application is used
  2. Click the Help link in the navigation panel. This will display the default help pages. These can be customized to meet your specific requirements. (Customizing Shopping including these help files is covered in a later Lab)

  1. The navigation panel on the left can be hidden by clicking the arrow indicated below. When the panel is hidden, note that the icon changes (as shown in the figures below) and can be clicked to restore the panel

Setting User Preferences

The user can change the way they interact with Shopping through the User Preferences interface. In this task, you will take a look at what options can be set by each user.

1ETRNW71

  1. On 1ETRNW71, logged on as 1ETRN\user with the Shopping portal open, click the gear icon at the top-right (indicated below) to open the Preferences (aka Personalise) page


    This page shows the identifiers that Shopping has retrieved about the local computer (Machine Details) and the logged-on user (Account Details).


    The Send Me Application Deployment Notifications option in the Site Settings section is enabled by default. This will cause Shopping to send an email to the user once it has determined that an Application has been successfully installed by ConfigMgr (it does this by checking for ConfigMgr Status and State messages from the client in the ConfigMgr database)
  1. Click the link Click here to view the diagnostics page. The diagnostics page shows some additional details of the current machine and user, including AD group memberships
  2. Click back in the browser to return to the Personalise page
  3. Scroll down to the Delivery Windows section

The Delivery Windows control is used to define periods throughout each day of the week when you would prefer that Applications were not installed (you actually define delivery exclusion periods, and the Delivery Windows – the windows of opportunity for Applications to be installed - are whatever periods are left). To define these exclusion periods where Application installation is to be avoided, simply click and drag from the start of the exclusion period to the end of the exclusion period. The example below might be used by a typical 9-6 office worker who does not want to be interrupted with any software installations during the working day, but has opened up a window in the middle of the day to allow any Applications they may have requested in the morning to be installed while they are on their lunch break


Note that the delivery windows in Shopping bear no resemblance to, nor affect ConfigMgr Maintenance Windows. When a Shopping order has been completed, Shopping adds the originating Computer into the Collection created by Shopping that is targeted with the Deployment (also created by Shopping) that will install the Application. If the user has defined an exclusion period in the Delivery Windows control, the originating computer will only be added to the Collection outside of these exclusion periods. However, once the computer has been added to the Collection, Shopping has no further control over events. For example, consider the user with the Delivery Windows configured as above has an order that is approved (completed) at 3PM Monday. Shopping will not add the computer to the Collection until after 6PM. Assuming the user shut down their computer before leaving at 5PM, when they power up their computer on Tuesday at 9:00AM the ConfigMgr client will execute the pending install within a few minutes of starting up, having no regard for the user's preferred exclusion.
The only way to reliably ensure the ConfigMgr client does not install software during certain periods is to use ConfigMgr Maintenance Windows.

View the portal as a Report Viewer

1ETRNW71 

  1. Close all windows and log 1ETRN\User off
  2. Log on to 1ETRNW71 as 1ETRN\Manager1 and open the Shopping portal
  3. Observe the navigation panel now has tabs (Self Service, Approval and Reports)
    4. A standard user (as in the previous task) is only able to see the Self Service tab, so to keep the interface clean, the tab is not displayed at all and the panel always shows the Self Service menu. Manager1 is a member of the Shopping_ReportViewers group specified during the Shopping Central Service installation and therefore has access to the Reporting tab, which is then visible along with the Self Service tab.
  4. Select the Reports tab then select Reports from the menu in the navigation panel to open the Reports page. Review the various reports that are available
    5. All the reports will be empty at present. You will revisit reports later, by which time there will be data generated from completion of the preceding labs.
  5. Log off Manager1

View the portal as an Administrator

1ETRNW71 

  1. Log on to 1ETRNW71 as 1ETRN\ShoppingAdmin and open the Shopping portal. Observe the tabs available to this user (Self Service, Approval and Administration)
    2. ShoppingAdmin is a member of the Shopping_Admins group defined during the installation of Shopping Central, so has access to the Administration tab in the portal.
  2. Click on the Administration tab to see the options available to an Administrator. We will use these later

Section 508 Compliance

Section 508 refers to a statutory section in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (refer to 29 U.S.C. 794d). The US Congress significantly strengthened Section 508 in the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Its primary purpose is to provide access to and use of Federal executive agencies' electronic and information technology (EIT) by individuals with disabilities. The statutory language of Section 508 can be found at www.section508.gov.

Section 508 requirements are separate from, but complementary to, requirements in Sections 501 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act that require, among other things, that agencies provide reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities, provide program access to members of the public with disabilities, and take other actions necessary to prevent discrimination on the basis of disability in their programs.
What does that mean to the Shopping? 
The impact to the Shopping website is minimal:

  • Some changes needed to be made to the color scheme as color cannot be the sole indicator of a condition.
  • The website needed to be navigable using the keyboard, as standard pointing devices such as mice or trackballs are not always useable by people with certain physical limitations.

1ETRNW71

  1. While logged on to 1ETRNW71 as 1ETRN\ShoppingAdmin with the Shopping web page open begin hitting the Tab key on your keyboard and watch for the focus to move around to different menu options within the web page
  2. Highlight Installation Tools and hit Enter to expand the menu
  3. Hit Tab to highlight Copy Configuration and hit Enter
  4. Hit Tab a number of times until the focus moves to the Search field in the Copy Configuration pane
  5. Experiment a bit on your own to test navigation using the keyboard
  6. Close all applications and log ShoppingAdmin off

Lab Summary

In this lab, we have explored the Shopping user interfaces that we will be using throughout this course to interact with the Shopping application. The Shopping Administration console is used to perform central administration and configuration, while the Shopping portal is used by end users to place orders and review the progress of their orders and installed applications. We have identified the preferences that a user can set to modify the way the application works for them personally.

We have seen that both the Shopping Administrator console and the Shopping portal can appear differently to different users. The Shopping Portal can be used by people with specific roles to perform tasks such as approval, viewing reports and performing admin tasks that general users cannot access. The Shopping Administrator console can be used by different users with different rights, for a more role based delegated administration model.
We have been introduced to the Section 508 Compliance features that have been incorporated into the Shopping website.

Next Page
Ex 4 - Shopping 5.6 - Working with Applications