Just time for a quick tip today. I’ve worked with quite a few clients who had a dependent need somewhere in their Environment Manager policy, for instance, ensuring that a drive was mapped for all users before particular file copies occurred. As AppSense EM’s policy configuration runs multithreaded, I found that on some occasions they’d done quite exotic bits of scripting to check that certain actions had run before others were allowed to execute.
However, often overlooked is the fact that by using Node Groups (right-click and choose Node Group), you can ensure that all nodes within the group must execute successfully before other child nodes are run. You can use this to ensure that actions that apply to everyone run first, and that Folder Redirection Actions (for instance) are completed successfully before any Group Policy Actions proceed. You can use Node Groups to simplify configurations that have grown to be quite complicated.
Essentially, the Node Group option creates a special node to which multiple reusable nodes can be added that must run to a successful conclusion before any child nodes are run. This means that child nodes can be dependent on multiple parent nodes. Only reusable nodes can be used within a node group, but child nodes can be any (appropriate to the trigger). If any of the reusable nodes within the group fail, the child nodes will not run.
You must create all required Reusable Nodes before setting up the node group. Only nodes that exist in the Reusable Nodes library can be added to the group.