Where is my collection

Everyone asks in the forum, "I need to find a collection, how do I do that?" Well there are reports that you can run. You can ask your peers where they stuck it or you can look. If you have several levels it can take awhile.

So I decided to come up with a new tool: Where is my collection?

It will help you locate your collection using a simply HTA program. Simply type in a few characters of the collection and it will return the top 100 matches. Then you find your collection and click on the "Locate collection" It will then give you a read out like this:

Root Collection
--Adobe
----Adobe Professional
------Machines still needing Adobe Profressional

It is accomplished by using the SMS_CollectToSubCollect namespace. Generally this is used to create a subcollection. It occured to me that this property is also read only so it was a good choice to use.

I have the tool on my site as stand alone tool since no arguments are passed from the console to the machine via right click, but I have also included how to add this to the console. I only spent several hours on the tool one evening so if you see something that can be improved, please let me know.

Enjoy, and as always, use at your own risk :)

http://www.sccm-tools.com/tools/standalone/standalone-Whereismycollection.html

Since this is also echoed in the Advertisments and Packages I could also create a tool or expand this one. Some of this has already been solved in ConfigMgr 2012 so go check it out!!

Not all machines in Collection

Did ever create a collection and realize that not all the computers were appearing?
When you create a collection you need to make sure you use:

SMS_R_System.Name or in some cases SMS_R_System.NetbiosName

Using the SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name or other similar options might not reveal all your systems. When creating collections of large amounts of machines use the SMS_R_System.

I have seen large collections lack 1 or even hundres of machines when using a SMS_G_System_XXXXX