The Freshservice Discovery Agent helps you keep track of your assets by sending details (and updates) about the machine it is installed on. You can use Group Policy Object (GPO) to deploy the Discovery Agent in all the computers in your domain.


Deploy Discovery Agent using GPO (Without Proxy)


Note - The steps in this solution are applicable for Windows Server 2012 only, and it may differ for other versions of the active directory.



  1. In your Freshservice instance, go to Admin-> Discovery and download the Windows Discovery agent file
  2. Download the InstallFSWinAgent_proxy.vbs file from this solution article.
  3. In Domain Controller, go to Start → Run, type gpmc.msc and hit Enter.  The Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) will open.
    1. In GPMC, right-click on the Domain where the agent should be installed and select "Create and Link a GPO here
    2. If you want to install the Discovery Agent on computers only in a particular Organizational Unit (OU), right click that OU and select “Create a GPO in this domain, and link it here”. 
  4. Give a name to the new GPO (Eg. "FreshserviceAgent") and click OK.
  5. Right-click the newly created GPO and select Edit from the context menu, Group Policy Management Editor (GPME) will pop up.
  6. In the GPME window navigate to Computer Configuration → Policies → Windows Settings → Scripts → double click Startup. This will open the Startup Properties window.
  7. Click the Show Files button, which opens a folder. Copy the Agent file and the installer script downloaded in Step 1 & 2 to this folder
  8. In the Startup Properties window, click Add. 
  9. Click Browse and select InstallScript from the folder mentioned in the previous step. 
  10. On Script Parameters field give the absolute path to MSI 

    Example:

     {01F619BB-A42B-4494-9143-F0917A87055E}\Machine\Scripts\Startup\FSAgent.msi REGISTRATIONTOKEN="<token>

  11. Click OK to close the “Add a script” form.
  12. Click OK to close “Startup Properties” window.
  13. Close the GPME window
  14. In order to enforce the current Group Policy immediately, run the command gpupdate /force
  15. From then on, Windows machines on that particular domain or OU will automatically install the Discovery Agent upon restart.


Deploy Discovery Agent using GPO (With Proxy)

If you have Proxy configured in your organization, follow the following steps.


  1. In your Freshservice instance, go to Admin-> Discovery and download the Windows Discovery agent file
  2. Download the InstallFSWinAgent_proxy.vbs file from this solution article.
  3. In your Domain Controller, go to Start → Run, type gpmc.msc and hit Enter.  The Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) will open.

    1. In GPMC, right-click on the Domain where the agent should be installed and select "Create and Link a GPO here"

    2. If you want to install the Discovery Agent on computers only in a particular Organizational Unit (OU), right click that OU and select “Create a GPO in this domain, and link it here”.
  4. Give a name to the new GPO (Eg. "FreshserviceAgent") and click OK.
  5. Right-click the newly created GPO and select Edit from the context menu, Group Policy Management Editor (GPME) will pop up.
  6. In the GPME window navigate to Computer Configuration → Policies → Windows Settings → Scripts → double click Startup. This will open the StartupProperties window.
  7. Click the Show Files button, which opens a folder. Copy the Agent file and the installer script downloaded in Step 1 & 2 to this folder
  8. In the Startup Properties window, click Add. 
  9. Click Browse and select Install Script from the folder mentioned in the previous step. 
  10. On Script Parameters field give the absolute path to MSI along with the additional arguments for your proxy configuration as shown below

    <shared agent installer with path> REGISTRATIONTOKEN="<token>" PROXYSERVER=<proxy server name/ip> PROXYPORT=<proxy port> PROXYUSERNAME=<proxy user name> PROXYPASSWORD=<proxy password>

    Example:
    \\fd.labs\SysVol\fd.labs\Policies\{01F619BB-A42B-4494-9143-F0917A87055E}\Machine\Scripts\Startup\FSAgent.msi REGISTRATIONTOKEN="dummytokenvalue" PROXYSERVER=192.168.5.161 PROXYPORT=808 PROXYUSERNAME=balaguru PROXYPASSWORD=bala

  11. Click OK to close the “Add a script” form.
  12. Click OK to close “Startup Properties” window.
  13. Close the GPME window
  14. In order to enforce the current Group Policy immediately, run the command gpupdate /force
  15. From then on, Windows machines on that particular domain or OU will automatically install the Discovery Agent upon restart.


More information on the Agent (supported OS, Prerequisites, download instruction... etc) can be found here.

To install the Discovery Agent on computers in a workgroup, use the PSExec tool.



InstallFSWinAgent_proxy.vbs InstallFSWinAgent_proxy.vbs

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