Collecting Mapped Network Drive Paths in Inventory Solution 8.x

Products

• Inventory Solution

Issue/Introduction

 Purpose: This document discusses a method to collect, store, and view inventory data on a Windows computer user’s mapped network drives including the path to the mapped drive.

Resolution

Considerations and limitations: The recommended best practice is to collect mapping data using a separate inventory policy or task. Since network drives are mapped when users log on and are specific to each user, the inventory must be run as "logged on user" to collect correctly.

 

Inventory task/policy setup:

1. Clone (copy) an existing inventory policy or create a new one.

2. Turn the policy on

3. Select the Custom Schedule link, and then add a schedule. If you want it to repeat, click the No repeat link and set the desired frequency.

4. Click the Advanced button and select the A user is logged on to the computer option

5. Click OK to save the settings, and click OK again to exit the Edit Policy Schedule window

6. In the "Select the types of inventory to gather" section, uncheck all options as this policy will be set to collect only mapped drives.

7. Click Advanced on the right and select the Data Classes tab

8. Navigate to Inventory data classes > Hardware > Common and select Logical Disk.

9. In the Run Options tab, ensure the Send inventory changes (deltas) only is unchecked

10. In the Windows section of the Run Options tab, select Run Inventory as Logged in user

11. Click OK to save changes

12. In the Applies To/Compliance section set the target to the desired set of computers

13. Click Save changes

 

The inventory will run as set by the schedule and depends on the clients schedule for checking for update policies.

 

Accessing the data:

The collected data is found in the Inv_HW_Logical_Disk table. Here is an example query to see the collected data:

 

select

vc.Name as [Computer Name],

ld.Name as [Drive Letter],

ld.[Provider Name] as [Network Path],

ld.[File System]

from Inv_HW_Logical_Disk ld

join vComputer vc on vc.Guid = ld._ResourceGuid

where ld.[Provider Name] <> 'NULL'