User Device Affinity

This is most evident when deploying applications; no longer do you have to assign applications to systems that do not use applications. Instead, the users who request and actually use the applications are targeted, allowing the application to potentially follow users around to multiple systems or their new system without any additional work.

This last part is directly applicable to OSD. If you choose to deploy applications to users instead of systems in your organization, you can essentially forget about having to add any user-specific applications to your task sequences. This should greatly simplify your task sequences and the process of creating and testing them, because the only thing left after removing the user-specific applications is a static list of tasks and possibly some hardware-centric tasks.

If you choose to use the user-centric approach to deploy applications, assign the primary user to the system during the task sequence. Immediately following completion of the task sequence, the applications assigned to that user are deployed to the system without the user having to log onto the system-this is known as application pre-deploy. This partially violates the goal of having everything ready for the user at the completion of the task sequence, but it greatly reduces the complexity and enormity of managing software in your organization.

Another complication that may arise is as some (or all) software is deployed after the task sequence, it is possible the software installation overwrites some of the user's preferences previously restored during the task sequence using the user state capabilities of OSD and USMT. For Microsoft and well-behaved application installers this shouldn't be an issue, but only testing will reveal this issue in your deployment.

To enable user-centric application deployment in your task sequences, follow these steps:

1. For PXE initiated task sequences, you must enable the User device affinity option on the PXE tab of a DP's Properties dialog box. A similar option is available for bootable media during its creation.
2. For non-PXE and nonbootable media initiated task sequences or to override the value set for PXE or in the bootable media, assign one of the following values to the SMSTSAssignUsersMode task sequence variable:
   • Auto: Enables user assignment during the task sequence and automatically approves it.
   • Pending: Enables user assignment during the task sequence but waits for administrator approval.
   • Disabled: Does not allow user assignment during the task sequence.
   These two methods of setting the value enable scenarios in which users are involved initiating the deployment of a task sequence. For these user-initiated scenarios, setting the UDA assignment to pending may be preferred.
3. Assign the name of the primary user for the system to the SMSTSUdaUsers variable in domain\username format. To assign multiple users, add them to the same variable, in the same format, and separated by a comma; for example, to assign John and Mike from the Odyssey domain, set the variable to odyssey\nbrady,odyssey\ gramsey.
4. Ensure all applications that you want to pre-deploy based on UDA have deployments assigning them to the appropriate users. These deployments must be set to Required and must have the Deploy automatically according to schedule with or without user login option selected.

You can set the two variables listed here in any method that fits your needs as discussed in the "Variables" section. If configured correctly, the user-targeted applications will automatically begin pre-deploying within a minute of completion of the task sequence. Unfortunately, the only way to verify this is to check the system's log files or use ConfigMgr reporting. There is no notice of the beginning or completion of this process.