When the job title isn’t suitable

Issues can arise where, for instance, some jobs are created using only a GUID ID as the name, making it hard for an administrator to classify the job. StifleR solves this by looking at the URL of the files within the job.

URLContains

The "URLContains" value checks if the URL of the active file being downloaded contains the string specified between the opening and closing XML tags (within the > < ). Use this to track hostnames or even ConfigMgr package IDs etc.

<Type TypeID="204" Match="URLContains">sms_pol</Type>

The above rule is used to match all ConfigMgr Policy Traffic as the URL always contains “sms_pol”.

SmallerThan/LargerThan

The "SmallerThan" and "LargerThan" values can be used to set catch-all values that simply compare the size of the download file with the numerical string contained between the opening and closing XML tags (within the > < ) and match accordingly.

Internet="1"/”0”

The Internet attribute and associated values can be used to match a download whose source is a public IP address. StifleR Classes 192/172 and 10 subnets as internal and anything else as external.

The value “0” equates to a non-Internet download.

<Type TypeID="303" Match="URLContains" Internet="1">adobe.com</Type>

This example will match any download with a URL containing “adobe.com” that originates from an external address.

BranchCache="1"/”0”

The BranchCache attribute and associated values can be used to distinguish BranchCache-enabled downloads from non-BranchCache jobs.

<Type TypeID="904" BranchCache="1" Internet="1" />

This example would match a job that was BranchCache aware, AND came from an external URL. You might use this type of rule as a ‘catch-all’ rule further down the list of <Type> XML elements to match any other job types.

Identifying Microsoft Configuration Manager job types

Because ConfigMgr assigns the same name to ALL content downloads, i.e. “CCMDTS Job”, this can make it impossible to identify the job any further. To provide more granularity with these ConfigMgr jobs, the StifleR Client can identify a certain type of download, and this is expressed within the rules. You can also identify and differentiate a job that is a ‘Required’ installation from an ‘Available’ installation performed by the user within ConfigMgr Software Center or Company Portal, along with jobs that are running within WinPE. This can be extremely useful for allocating priority and/or bandwidth to differing types of ConfigMgr download.