This week we had the second CEP meeting on the Application Management Topic. In this post I will describe the most important improvements which were presented in this session.

In Part 1 of the application Management topic we have spoke about setting requirement rules as replacement of collection based rules for application deployment. Requirement rules are used to evaluate if a application can be installed. Beside the requirement rules Global Conditions are also introduced in vNext.

Global Definitions are a foundation of requirement rules. Global Definitions can be properties of a User or Device object. In the presentation the following examples are given:

• Default Global Condition: Memory is greather then 512MB
• Default Global Condition: Windows Operaing System equals Windows 7
• Custom Global Condition: Machine is Corporate Device maps to a register key attribute

In ConfigMgr vNext it’s possible to group global definitions in logical group. In these groups you can use expressions. An example of a Group Definitions group can be:

Corporate Primary Device:

• Memory = 1GB
• AND Free DiskSpace = 500MB
• AND Operating System = Windows 7
• AND Primary Device = TRUE

Grouping Global Definitions is a very powerful way of defining global requirements for applications.
In beta 2 version of ConfigMgr vNext two other great new features are introduced: Application Uninstall and Application Supersedence.  With these new functionality Beta 2 has a complete Application Lifecycle.

The goals for Application Uninstall functionality are:

• Provide Uninstall feature as part of the Application Model
• Consistent, reliable and predicable experience across all deployment types
• Ensure that state-based application deployment includes removal of software in addition to installation.

In one of my next blogs, when Beta2 is public available, I hope to post a video tutorial about application uninstall functionality. The last thing what was introduced during this session was the supersedence functionality. Supersedence is the ability for an admin to create a relationship and declare one application new then another precious application. The overall goal is to halt installations of older application versions and migrate users to the newer version. The following key scenarios where given during this session:

• Ability to create a new application and make sure we do not get a ‘Race Condition’  between conflicting detection methods
• Ability to automatically upgrade or replace an application with a new superseding application
• Ability to offer users only the latest release of an app in the sofwate catalog or software center.

The supersedence functionality is also introduced in Beta 2. So we have to wait for this version. Yesterday we had a presentation on the ExpertsLive event and heared that  Beta 2 of ConfigMgr vNext will be released around MMS 2011