Balloon Notification System
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Deployment Solution, Software Delivery Solution, Software Virtualization Solution, Notification Server
3rd Party Products
Submitted by pogo on 5 February, 2008 - 10:14.
Seventy Five Percent of my users are remotely connected through VPN and work on production when connected, so reboots, service packs, and production app upgrades are all tricky to handle. So I decided to put some time into a nifty communication system to notify my users of what I am doing, or what I need them to do.
We've all Been There
Ever needed to push software to a C level that required some software to be closed before installing, or a long install that required the user to decide when to install due to production loss? Maybe you deployed some software and now you need a user to reboot. In my environment we have to be very conscious of the user when we deploy software, updates, and system changes.
Introducing SYSBALLOON.EXE
Sysballoon.exe is a DOTNET 2.0 (2.0 Framework Required) command line utility that allows you to pop up a systemtray notification balloon that is very customizable. You can customize the title, text, frequency, command that runs when the balloon is clicked, how many cycles the balloon goes through, right click menu title, right click menu command, hover title, and more. The tool will create an XML file for you to use if you choose.(Since the command line can get pretty long) This gives you the ability to create customized balloons for many situations and store them on a network share somewhere to use them.
Remember, I developed this for my engineering group and tailored it to our needs. It has worked great for us and I would love to develop some more functionality into it. So please vote and make suggestions. If it gets enough votes, I will just post the zipped up dotnet solution. If not i will have to use future upgrades to get the points. :) (Just being transparent.)
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(69 votes)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| sysballoon.zip | 17.26 KB |
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Application error
Mmmm!!1 Keep getting "Application failed to intialize" Error ???
App Error
Try copy and pasting one of the example command lines verbatim.
Sample
Hi Yes I've tried that with the same error ??
Update: I googled the error and seems you need .net 2.0 instaleed DOH!!! thanks pogo
C
Could you be more specific
Could you be more specific on the usage of this? Can I use this for software delivery?
I really like this tool
But it does seem like it needs some more debugging work and wow nearly 12MB of ram on my system to run!
How can I use this as a notification only tool? I noticed if I put just "" in the OnClickCMD in the xml it will crash out with System.IO.FileNotFoundException once clicked.
Thanks for posting.
Space the Final Frontier
Hi you need to have a space between the quotes that way it will ignore the command/comment at that part in the script
I use it this way just as a popup notification before or after a software install, either run as another job or part of a job
HTH C
Hmmmm
That's not the tool only, it is also the .Net Framework, nowadays everybody has enough memory in his machine, so it isn't bad at all, it ensures fast exection.
It can't find a file (xml most lightly) ensure this is available.
FrankB
My Bad Code
The error you are experiencing is because of my coding. All it needs is an on error resume like statement. What it cant find is "". What I do is slip an "Ipconfig" in there or a "cmd /c dir". Then again if carlsson is correct about just placing a space I would do that. In any case one of these will work.
Does it work with balloon notifications suppressed in the reg?
Does this still work even if you have included the registry hack to disable windows balloon notifications?
It will not
If the balloon notifications are disabled the user will see nothing.