MDT 2013 and RES Automation Manager

Question

Hi,
In one of the first step of MDT I'm using a simple script that asks for the country code (e.g. NL), which I would like to store in an environment variable, which I can later on read into RES Automation Manager. But it seems that after MDT is finished and
Windows starts up, the environment variable is gone.  Are there any other ways to accomplish this? I'm using it to install language specific applications from RES AM, after MDT is finished. The Windows language settings itself I set with the
CustomSettings.ini, that is based on the same simple script
[Settings]
Priority=ByCountry, CountryAbbr,Model,Default
Properties=CountryAbbr, CountryOU,CustomProperty
[ByCountry]
UserExit=ZTIGetCountry.vbs
CountryAbbr=#GetCountryCode()#
[NL]
CountryOU=NL
CountryOrRegion=31
InputLocale=0409:00020409
KeyboardLocale=nl-US
UserLocale=nl-NL
UILanguage=nl-NL
TimeZoneName=W. Europe Standard Time
ZTIGetCountryCode.vbs
Function UserExit(sType, sWhen, sDetail, bSkip)
oLogging.CreateEntry "entered UserExit ", LogTypeInfo
UserExit = Success
End Function
Function GetCountryCode()
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set objEnv = objShell.Environment("SYSTEM")
GetCountryCode = InputBox("Fill in Country Code (NL DE DA FR PT); If default, use None")
objEnv("MDT_Language") = GetCountryCode
Set objShell = Nothing
Set objEnv = Nothing
End Function
Any idea what I can do else??
Thanks,
Mario

Answer 1

Hi, this looks quite similar to my blog post I did some time ago:
MDT 2012 LTI Deployment, Regional and Locale settings based on #chars of Hostname
The trick in your specific case is to either, not reboot your machine, or to set the installation of RES Automation Manager right after the reboot.
Basically MDT clean's up it's act after it is finished. This also means the environment variables which are stored in a .dat file in the C:\MININT folder are removed after MDT has finished.
So either you need to find a way to perform your RES AM job, during the MDT task sequence, or set or dump the environment variables to a file are temporarily variable which RES AM can use.
Here are some articles that will help you get further:
MDT and RES Automation Manager – Let’s come together (in Sweet Harmony)
Creating custom variables in MDT 2013
Finding All References to MDT Variables in a Deployment Share: VariableDocumentor
v1.0
Dumping Task Sequence Variables
Cheers!
If this post is helpful please click "Mark for answer", thanks! Kind regards