Technical @ Updates

One of the cool things that Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.5 can do is to perform an agentless scan of your computer assets. Here’s what happens in the Inventory and Assessment Wizard in Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.5.

To scan your network or Active Directory for computers, use the Inventory and Assessment Wizard. Choose Windows Computer.

Then you will have to choose the computer discovery method you prefer. The useful ones are Active Directory as well as network discovery. Although you can also create a text file with known computers so that the scanning will be directed.

During the wizard, I selected network discovery, that’s why I’m now prompted with an IP address range.

Then you will have to indicate the credentials administrative credentials to the target machine (required for WMI access). You can place either a user that is a member of Domain Admins (by default a member of the local Administrators group on the machine), or if this is too much, the local administrator of the machine. For Domain credentials, you need to indicate the credentials in domain\username format. If you don’t indicate a domain name, it means it’s a user account in the local machine.

Review the summary of the wizard then proceed to scan.

After scanning, you can now create the reports and proposals that come with MAPS toolkit. To do that, go toFile menu, and select Prepare New Reports and Proposals.

The reports and proposals will now be prepared. To access the files, go to View and select Saved Reports and Proposals.

You can download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.5 here.