Downloading a resource of a Microsoft tool in Release Management

In Release Management 2015 if you need to download a powershell script or any other resource associated with a tool whose publisher is Microsoft you cannot directly save a local copy of the resource from the Tools page in the Release Management client.

For example consider the action “Delete File(s) or Folder” in the Category “Windows OS”, whose publisher is Microsoft.

The tool associated with this action is “Windows Common IO”.

When you open this tool you cannot download the resource, the PowerShell script ManageWindowsIO.ps1, to your machine.

To download it follow below steps.

• Open the logs of the “Microsoft Deployment Agent” on a machine. If you have a Dev machine where you have setup the Deployment Agent you can use it. Else you could login to a machine where this service is setup.
  1. To find where the logs are generated, open DeploymentAgent.exe config.
  2. To know where the DeploymentAgent.exe.config is located open the properties of the windows service “Microsoft Deployment Agent” and locate the “Path to executable” which gives the location of the exe, where the corresponding config also sits.
  3. Open the config and look for the value for the parameter fileName in the section <configuration>/<loggingConfiguration><listeners> in <add name=”Rolling Flat File Trace Listener”………>. The value is the path of the deployment logs folder.
  4. Try to open the folder mentioned. If the log file is empty it is because it only logging error details.
  5. To log all details the config file needs to be edited.
     1. Stop the windows service.
     2. Open a notepad as admin and open the config file from File>Open.
     3. Edit the value for filter to “Verbose”. This filter parameter is located in the section <configuration>/<loggingConfiguration><listeners> in <add name=”Rolling Flat File Trace Listener”………>.
     4. If needed edit the log folder location too, for easy reference.
     5. Save the file and start the service.
  6. Create a simple release template with the action “Delete File(s) or Folder”. Make sure to use the server on which we have changed the logging to be verbose.
  7. Trigger a release.
  8. Open the log file “DeploymentAgent.log”
  9. Locate “***********Installing component using command “powershell -command ./ManageWindowsIO.ps1”. Or just search for ManageWindowsIO.ps1.

That’s it.

You have downloaded a resource of a Microsoft tool.

Revert back the changes to the config file.