With the new upcoming release of Application Manager 4.1 we have now merged the “good ol’ Distribution Manager” functionality into the product. This is included in a feature that we call Deployment Templates. This means that you can use template settings and awesome variable naming in order to create the items in Configuration Manager 2012, especially the swanky new Application model things in ConfigMgr 2012. With AM 4.2 we will also be supporting the all new ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 features as well.
First you have to configure Application Manager to use the all new “Deployment Template” functionality:
Once you have selected the new model you have to create and modify your different deployment templates:
You can also work with your variables directly from withon Application Manager:
Then you can select which template you want to use at the time of import, you can also preview the names of the objects that you are about to create to ensure that the template names are OK:
Once deployed, you can see all the objects created by Application Manager and just imagine the enormous amount of time that has been saved:
//Andreas Hammarskjöld
Director of Product Development
Atea Services & Software