Overview

Scheduled tasks are a reliable and common way of deploying software in any scale from a few machines to hundreds. It is included with all versions of Windows and requires no special installation or programming. There are several ways to create a scheduled task. In this post, we will be looking at scheduling a task using PowerShell to deploy RightSight service and MeetUp firmware with just a few command line arguments.
 

PowerShell scheduled tasks

The script uses a pipeline to deploy to systems. This means you can use a CSV, Text File, or a comma separated list in the PowerShell Command, anything that contains a name of a computer. There are two ways to then execute the scheduled tasks, on demand or at a specific time. Remember that schedule tasks are based on the time of the local machine. You can find more details on using PowerShell and scheduled tasks at: https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/module/scheduledtasks/?view=win10-ps
 

Preparation Steps

• Remote PowerShell is enabled
• The computer is on the domain (not a requirement, but simplifies the process)
• Your account has the required permission to create a scheduled task (Power User at least)
• A file share containing the execution batch script and the installer file for example \\server\share\fwupdater.
  • Download the Logitech Software and Firmware, this is the MeetUp Firmware Upgrade from: https://support.logi.com/hc/articles/360024844233-Downloads-MeetUp-ConferenceCam
  • The PowerShell installer script which can be found at: https://github.com/youseeadam/Create-ScheduledTask
  • You will also need the install-rightsight.ps1 script found at: https://github.com/youseeadam/Install-RightSight
• The account running the script has access to the file share or the computer name (though this will require a larger level of work preparing the shared directory)

 

Process

1. Create a filter for machines to deploy the scheduled task. This can be a CSV file, an Active Directory Query, a list of machines separated by commas, etc…
2. Pipe the above statement into the scheduled task builder script (Create-ScheduledTasks.ps1) with options
3. The script will verify usernames and passwords (this will prevent the account from being locked out), it will not verify access to the file share.
4. At the scheduled time the task will copy the files from the shared location to the %temp%\fwupdate directory of the user account configured in the scheduled task
5. The task will then run the installer %temp%\fwupdate\install-rightsight.ps1 -rightsight  [dynamic|ocs|off]

 

Create the Scheduled Task

From an account that has access to the remote machine(s) run the following command. In this example the serverlist is a csv file with the header remotecomputername.

import-csv serverlist.csv |  select-object remotecomputername | create-ScheduledTask.ps1 -SourceFolder "\\server\share\fwupdate\" -UserName "domain\username" -RightSight Dynamic -startime "February 12, 2019 12:45:00 PM"

You can pipe from anything that will return a computer a computer name, get-adcomputer for example. But it must return a computer name (string) not an object. For example with get-adcomputer you select-object dnshostname

Parameters

RightSight
How Right Sight will be used, one of the following options

• Dynamic: Will always run Dynamic Framing
• OCS: On Call Start. It will frame only when the meeting starts. To reset to Dynamic use the home button on the control
• Off: No Framing

RemoteComputer
Pulled from Pipeline, there is no parameter for this

SourceFolder
The location that contains the firmware installer, and the install-rightsight.ps1 script. For example, \\server\share\fwupdate\

UserName
The account used for the scheduled task to run as. This must be a valid account either on the local machine or domain (using a domain account is preferred to access the file share)

StartTime
If Omitted the task can only run on-demand.
This is a DateTime value of when you want the script to execute
Any of the formats from this output: (Get-Date).GetDateTimeFormats()
 

Manually running the scheduled task

You can run a scheduled task from a single line. If you have more than one machine you can use the same filter used to deploy the scheduled task. In the below example the computer names are in a column call RemoteComputerName  

Scheduled task History

Scheduled tasks rely on Event Viewer for history. In some cases, this may be disabled by default. To enable this from a remote computer requires the following

• The inbound firewall rule needs to be enabled: Remote Event Log Management (RPC)
• Run the following command
  • wevtutil set-log Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational /enabled:true /r:<computername> 
• If the user running the above command does not have appropriate access, you can add the /p:<password> and /u:<username options
• In a batch script the command would look like the following
  • for /F  %%A in (c:\scripts\roomsystems-scheduled.txt) do wevtutil set-log Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational /enabled:true /r:%%A