ZENworks includes an application-management suite, a desktop policy manager and a remote-control component. All are NDS-aware and snap in to the standard NetWare management tool, NWAdmin. The only standalone administration component is the Snappshot utility, which is used for generating standard templates of a given application.

ZENworks is comprised of three workstation components: NAL (NetWare Application Launcher), which delivers applications to users via snapshot technology; ZENRC, the remote-control application; and WM, the workstation manager, which delivers standard Microsoft policies from NDS, inventories workstations to NDS and communicates workstation changes back to NDS.

During the past 18 months, we tested ZENworks in our Savannah, Ga., labs, and found that it does exactly what it's supposed to do: distribute standard network applications to desktops, simplify the system-policy process, perform workstation inventory and deploy administrative remote control--all within the framework of NDS. Still, there's a knack to using ZENworks, with both its deployment and its troubleshooting. We discovered its snapshot application technologies can require a good bit of juggling to get just right, third-party scripting solutions are almost always required and embedding desktop management functionality in the directory means you'll have to keep your directory super healthy. ZENworks' low delivery complexity means the back end needs rigorous maintenance, but it's a worthwhile trade-off.

Snapshot Mascot
ZENworks can deploy an application in one of two ways. The simple method gives the user with shortcuts; the template method installs various DLLs and registry entries to the workstation. The templates and/or shortcuts are then deployed to the users with the NAL component of ZENworks.

Usually an application will be associated to a user via NDS; the application then shows up in that users' NAL window. However, NAL is also useful for updates. You can combine NALs RunOnce and Force flags, compelling a user to load a required update. Because the system runs the update only once, users aren't pestered the way they are when updates are run from a login script.

Unfortunately, there's no way to check the date of a given file, then run the update if the file is out of date. Similarly, NAL can't launch an application based on the results of a registry query, though this capability is scheduled to be in the forthcoming ZENworks 2.0. Luckily, NAL is just as capable of running a third-party scripting tool as any other application; your script can invoke the application, set window focus, send mouse clicks and so on. We used and liked WinBatch, but any scripting tool would work. (See "NAL Plus Scripting Tools Yields Powerful Automation" to the right.)