UIU Blog

School is back in session, which means that summer is starting its slow transition into fall. For many of us, this triggers the realization that our year-end projects are starting soon. Regardless of whether that awareness is met with excitement or anxiety, now is a good time to take a closer look at your procedures.

The best practices that keep you sharp as you perform day-to-day tasks are easy to overlook. However, refocusing on those daily routines will make your daily processes more efficient — and save a lot of time and unnecessary headaches.

For example, PC imaging is something you can probably do in your sleep. You do it often enough that you barely notice the individual tasks anymore, right? But basing your work on habit means you may not be using the best methods. Before you take on your next big assignment, take another look at the basic guiding principles of deployment.

Key deployment best practices

As you look closer at your PC imaging procedures, consider these best practices:

• Understand your goals: How many different operating systems and hardware configurations are you dealing with? How will those numbers affect the time and effort you need for your deployment? Understanding what's involved and having all of the necessary components organized is crucial to running a smooth project. It's certainly easier to compose a list of the systems and configurations before you start than it is to halt the process when you encounter something unexpected. 
  
  
• Prepare your drivers: Are you using driver packages in SCCM or MDT? How complete are they? How much effort will be involved with maintaining and organizing packages for disparate hardware? The key here is making sure that you have all of the necessary drivers before you begin. One easy solution is using the Universal Imaging Utility (UIU), which not only simplifies the imaging process, but it also greatly reduces time spent on support-oriented tasks with its comprehensive driver database.

• Customize your image: Your organization has needs and requirements that the initial image doesn't address. So be sure to modify your image first so that it has only the configurations and applications that will be useful to your organization.

Following these easy processes can certainly improve any deployment project. Getting back to basics doesn't get much easier than incorporating applications such as the UIU, which distributes specific configurations to the appropriate machines, thus freeing you to focus on other tasks. You don't have to go back to school to understand the benefits of that time and energy saver.

What other back-to-school basics do you review before the year ends?