How do you manage software

[jeff_howard2]

I have been the IT Manager at small AEC Firm for over 20 years.  Prior to covid, managing the software was relatively easy even with 40-50 users.  A few long weekends a year and everything was good since 95% of the computers were in the office.  

Now, post covid, and 70-90 users and with almost 95% of the computers are out of the office on nights and weekend. The users take their laptops home with them now.  Since then, we have needed to bring on an MSP to help managing the hardware and software, but even with the tools the MSP have at their disposal, managing Autodesk software installs and updates are still a huge challenge.  In recent months Autodesk has made the attempts to make some of these Maintenace issues easier, but unfortunately every attempt they make fails it seems.

Long gone are the times where you can have all of the installer packages and updates saved locally on a network for easy deployment at any time of the day or night.  Since Covid, all of the updates and support are done remotely.  Log-in scrips will not work for most of the updates, since they are huge and users home internet connects are hinder the bandwidth that is needed to run updates in a timely manner.  If the scrips run when the user gets into the office it can take more than an hour before they can use some of their software, and their computer may reboot with little or no warning, or just crash.

I know this is a rant on Autodesk for failing on multiple levels in supporting the Network Admins that struggle to manage and install their software.  I am truly looking for solutions here either from Autodesk or the community.  Is there a Proven way to install and update the Autodesk software efficiently with most of your users are remote and install/updates times can generally take more than an hour?

Since mid-2022 our MSP has brought on new tools to try to help with some of the install issues.  We have been using Immy-Bot with some success, but only for the initial install of the software.  Even Immy-bot admits that Autodesk does not make installing and updating their software easy.  Below are some of the comments I have seen in the Immy-bot forms as I have been trying to work with them more to see if their platform can help.

• Only the base version of the software is openly available for download.  This makes updates only available to people that have active Autodesk licenses.
• Meny Registry keys that are documented in Autodesk guides either don't exist or don't work.
• There are undocumented API calls and other processes that make customizing the installer files and updates nearly impossible.
• Every new version of the software generates new Registry entries and wipes out old ones.  So, any customization is lost or gets corrupted.

[brian.strandberg]

I take care of these via a few approaches.

1) I have custom software we have added to our AutoCAD based products (lisp) which update a database on our server.  We track Software version, usage, and some thing to be proactive on managing like CPU uptime, free physical memory and temp folder size.

2) When I see a user needs an update, I email them to run the Update from Autodesk access.  With the new registry key feature that allows a non-admin user to install their own updates, we have greatly eased the workload on our IT department.  

[Gabriel_Watson]

In the past my previous IT team would request PCs to be left on for the night, then use Windows SCCM to install everything and, finally, we would scramble all tier 1 (and at times 2) support folks to complete setup in the morning But again, that was in a hybrid office with some remote and some in-office. Some laptops had to be brought into the office just for the update day too, which was bad.

Like Brian's comment above, we moved on to request users to self-update, and then IT support can jump in to set up whatever defaults we require, as needed. I don't think the leftover issues from that will be going away before all Autodesk products end up in the cloud, in my opinion.

[handjonathan]

Hi @jeff_howard2 

Thanks a lot for posting your question to the forums!   Has the solution suggested by @brian.strandberg @Gabriel_Watson helped with your issue?
 
We look forward to hearing back from you with more information so we can help you as a community!