Hi,I have been asked if there is anyway that SCCM can audit our collection of laptops. Now I know that if the laptops are connected to our network then the answer is yes. However many of our laptops are standalone or connect to the network very rarely.I realise i could network the standalone laptops temporarily, install the SCCM and allow the inventory data to populate SCCM, however with the 90 deletion task set, this is not going to be a permanent solution.Is there a way to extract the inventory data from the standaone laptops onto a key for instance and then import into SCCM? And somehow mark these items not to delete? (I know this wont dynamically change, but its better than nothing)I guess what i am asking is how other people deal with keeping an inventory of standalone laptops using SCCM?

You can't export the data to a key and mark it for non-deletion seperately from other inventory. Your best bet for laptops if to use IBCM to gather inventory form them across the internet no matter where they are. If you have computers that are being powered off for more than 90 days either you will lose that or you need to increase the 90 day retention to something greater.John Marcum | http://www.TrueSec.com/en/Training.htm | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum

Hi,Just a comment. It's might not be that big a deal if a fews clients are being removed from the ConfigMgr. console. The client will show again when it's sending up discovery and inventory data.Kent Agerlund | http://scug.dk/members/Agerlund/default.aspx | The Danish community for System Center products

Hello,Most of our standalone laptops do not attach to the internet so i guess IBCM is out for us.I dont really want to remove the task for deleting resources not contacted within 90 days.I guess using SCCM for this purpose isnt looking likely.For anyone else in this situation, what do you do? Access databases? Excel??

Access databases? Excel?? Why don't you just setup a SQL task that exports the relevant data to another SQL database?

So, we could temporarily attach these laptops to our network, install the SCCM client, wait to allow the SCCM database to be populated with inventory data for the laptops. then export the data from the SCCM SQL onto a separate non-SCCM related SQL database before the 90 days is up?

ive got a similar issue at my site... Currently we have 1600 Worstations which are fine in SCCM. i have around 700 laptops of which only 300 a regularly on the network. At present i havent put these into SCCM due to the same reason as you that most of the data would be redundant & removed after the period. For my workstations I have put the delete resources down to 30 days which works nicely. Im now looking at putting my laptops into SCCM but im still dubias about doing so as most will fall out the backend.For hardware inventory i do have a vbs file which writes to access of which I pull & have a kept record for all the hardware.Would be nice though to have these devices come into SCCM & data be kept for laptops only unless manaully removed.

The "Right" answer is to move to Native mode, and have your clients (or at least your laptops) be native-mode clients, which can communicate to your infrastructure via the internet--so basically from almost anyway. So I recommend that you start a project to look toward moving in that direction. It does require some planning of course, it's not something you'd just "turn on", so do your research, and/or even look into getting in a consultant to help with the heavy lifting. :-) Otherwise, I'm sure there are 3rd party, unsupported, ways to get inventory from your disconnected clients into configMgr. I know I saw something from Roger Zander for that, but it was meant for SMS2003 clients, and also meant to address truly disconnected clients. I don't think it's the right answer for anyone--IBCM is the right answer.Standardize. Simplify. Automate.

Sherry, If a client is internet based, if its used inside the WAN will it connect to sccm via a site or will it still only access via the internet & thee intenet based site?I did have a read up about intenert clients as an option. the only issue I have is often the laptops are standalone & dont have access to the internet & are rarely in the intranet.

There are internet- and intranet-based site sytems. The client is able to determine if it's on the WAN or the internet and does connect to the respective systems (depending on the setup of the native mode implementation)