Pop up to block during presentation

[stephenutsw]

Thank you for the great tool! I'm in a science environment and these are right up our alley.

One question regarding AutoReboot: is there a method to prevent the pop up when a user has a Powerpoint presentation going? Obviously having it pop up during a presentation is a no-go. We use a macOS notification project called "yo" which accomplishes something like you have here, but it uses the built in notification systems as the mechanism. The built in notifications have a setting to disable the notification "when mirroring to tv's and projectors", which assumes a presentation.

Is it possible to achieve a similar kind of thing? I would love to roll this to faculty laptops but that part does make me worry.

Thanks!

[stephenutsw]

I am also assuming you use some mix of GPO's like:

Configure Automatic Updates - ENABLED
(4 - Auto Download and schedule the install)
Allow non-administrators to receive update notifications - ENABLED
Allow Automatic Updates immediate installation - DISABLED
No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic update installations - ENABLED

[teknowledgist]

is there a method to prevent the pop up when a user has a Powerpoint presentation going?

There isn't anything built in for that, but it is a good idea. I'm not sure how to check for that, but I'll try to find out. Of course, all the presenter need do is click the remind me later button and it goes away.

I am also assuming you use some mix of GPO's

In my environment, it is being used with SCCM. The update deployments are configured to install but not reboot the machine. That is what puts the machine into pending reboot status, but this script recognizes 3 of 4 general pending reboot possibilities (that I know of). (The only one it skips is pending file renames which occur quite more frequently than once a month and aren't usually a security concern.) The reason I wrote this was because users were "forgetting" or delaying the reboot for far too long (6 months in one case I witnessed!). I'm not sure of the registry settings for updates, but any configuration that initiates the updates and allows the user to choose when to reboot to complete the update should work. I don't think this will recognize updates in a pending download status.

[stephenutsw]

Thanks so much. Looks like i will have to do some modifications to achieve what we need. Without SCCM, we will need to set it to prompt the user to actually install the updates (which is fine; it can download them in the background and then just be prompted to install).

Is it possible for Win 10 systems to get just the Toast notification (with slightly altered text) and not the Reboot popup? That may still be a win for us if we can get it to schedule frequently.

And yes, I am VERY familiar with users deferring updates!! Thanks again.

[teknowledgist]

Frankly, I think this script is overkill if you just want to pop up Toast notifications. I don't know how well it will work, but you could try commenting out the start-process line around 2143 as a quick-and-dirty "fix". That will prevent the window from ever opening, but should bring up a Toast notice every 4 hours.

I'm not having much luck with identifying ongoing presentations. I believe there is a solution for PowerPoint, but I don't hold out much hope for LibreOffice Impress, Skype or Adobe Reader/Acrobat presentations. If I stumble on a solution, I will update the code.

[stephenutsw]

It may be overkill, but I do run into the same issues you have with compliance. I just can't be quite so harsh (disabling NIC's is not possible). I'll try the method you suggest.

I believe the munki do not disturb code is essentially looking for "screen mirroring" (not a second screen, but only when mirrored) to queue from. We are Powerpoint throughout, so we wouldn't have the issue w/AdobeReader/Acrobat or Libre Office. Skype...might be an issue, but maybe livable. We will probably have to adjust the notification time to something more like 6 or 8 hours, but we will find out in testing.

Thanks again!

[teknowledgist]

If that is your concern, you can totally stop the disabling of the NIC. Just use the -level None parameter (or change the default level to "None" on line 183).

The current default level of Low will only disable the NIC if the machine has an previously identified but unacknowledged pending reboot when Patch Tuesday comes around. If the computer is being used, that is unlikely to happen because the warning messages are hard to totally ignore. Thus, either somebody is logged in but not using the machine for a long time, or the user is particularly obstinate and consciously avoiding even acknowledging that a reboot is necessary. A reboot re-enables the NIC. If nobody is logged in, the machine will reboot when it is pending.

Windows Laptops have a "Presentation Mode" (which amounts to mirroring) that I can look for, but that is not available on desktop systems (without some hacking), so I'm looking into a method of identifying PowerPoint with an open presentation (not in edit mode). I haven't given up! (But my time is pretty limited in a new job.)