Overall Solutions

To use Action Engine you will need to configure an action, load a list of computers from a text file, and then click the Start Action button.

Configuring Action Engine

The first time you launch Action Engine, no actions or parameters are specified. Let's have a look at the different buttons.

Options Button

The options button allows you to configure the colours used by the Computer Status window. Clicking this button will bring up the following window:

To change the colours used, simply click one of the three buttons and pick a new colour. If you do not want to ping the computer prior to the script or executable being run, for example, your organization has a firewall rule preventing pinging; uncheck the Ping computer before action check box. If this box is unchecked you will not be able to Action Engine as a ping scanner.

Change Action

In order to execute a script or executable on a list of machines you will need to specify the Action and the Parameters. Type in the path to the script or executable you would like to execute on a list of machines. For example, let's assume you wanted to kill a particular process that was running on a number of machines. You could specify an action of C:\tools\pskill.exe (assuming you have a copy of pskill which is part the pstools suite from Microsoft) and Parameters of /accepteula \\%computername% PROCESSNAME where PROCESSNAME is the name of the process you want to kill.

Both the Action and the Parameters will be saved so that the next time you run Action Engine you won't have to specify these fields again; unless you want to perform a different action.

Load Computers from Text File Button

You have to load a list of computers that Action Engine will process. Click the Load Computers from Text File button. Browse to a text file that contains a list of computers. The computers listed may be in the form of a computer name, a fully-qualified domain name or an IP address. The computers must be in a single list with one computer per line. Text files that do not meet this requirement will fail to load. Once you have selected the text file, click the Open button.

Once you open the text file the computers from the list will be displayed in Action Engine:

Start Action Button

Click the Start Action button and Action Engine will start processing the computers. Assuming that you have not disabled the Ping computer before action option, each machine will be pinged first. If the ping is successful, the action will be executed. The results of the script will then be displayed in the computer status window. It important to note that the script or executable being run via Action Engine return a numeric value, for example, 0 (zero) meaning success.

Stop Action Button

At anytime during the execution of actions you can stop the Action Engine by pressing the stop button.

Export Button

You can export the data from the Computer Status window to a csv file or to the clipboard. Click the Export drop-down button and select the appropriate menu item to export the data.