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FastTrack Scripting Host - The One Stop Shop For Scripting Admins
FastTrack Scripting Host, now available in version 6, is a replacement for VBScript, PowerShell,
Bat files, KiXtart and all other Windows scripting tools. You can easily create powerful domain logon
scripts, install scripts, backup scripts, perform administrative tasks and anything else you use scripts
for with amazing end-user GUI, easier than you could ever imagine!
Your scripts will be much more powerful, faster, easier to construct and typically 10% the size of scripts written in VBScript or PowerShell, as our
Comparison Chart clearly shows. On top of this, you can encrypt your scripts to ensure that no user can read them and no one outside your company
can ever reverse engineer them. In addition, client deployment is completely automatic without requiring local admin permissions. If all this
seems too good to be true, just download it and try it out yourself!
FastTrack Scripting Host is fully supported on all 32/64-bit Windows versions: 7/Vista/XP/2000/NT4 and 2008/2003/2000 Server.
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Why?
FastTrack Scripting Host tries to solve one of the major problems in the world of a systems administrator:
Scripting has always been a hybrid between development and administration.
While Microsoft moves scripting more and more towards actual programming, FastTrack Scripting Host goes in the
complete opposite direction. A good systems administrator is typically one that knows about infrastructure and configuration, not programming.
While FastTrack Scripting Host is a scripting language, it’s so high-level and easy to use that it resembles configuration
more than actual programming. This is why the cornerstone paradigm of FastTrack Scripting Host has always been:
One operation - one script line, which is completely unmatched by other scripting languages.
To see this demonstrated live, consider joining our completely free weekly
webinar.
The webinar is hosted by Binary Research International, the distributor of FastTrack Scripting Host and
also the inventor of Ghost, the world’s first and most commonly used cloning software.
The webinar session lasts about an hour and allows you to ask questions at the end of the demonstration.
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Watch The FastTrack Scripting Host Walkthrough
Video tutorials are available here, as a quick start
to FastTrack Scripting Host.
Watch senior technical writer Steve Dodson from Binary
Research International go through the basic mechanics of FastTrack Scripting Host.
Steve will take you through the setup process, the editor, debugging, error handling,
setting up logon scripts, performing basic scripting tasks and more.
Press play on the video to the left to hear Binary Research International CEO Annette Dow
introducing the walkthrough and explaining why FastTrack Scripting Host is
a must-have for any systems administrator.
The next sections on this page will quickly go through a few of the areas you can cover with
FastTrack Scripting Host. For general documentation, please refer to our online documentation
or visit our forum pages to talk
to other people about FastTrack Scripting Host.
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Logon scripts for your domain
One of the things you can use FastTrack Scripting Host for, is powerful logon scripts, nothing like anything
you have ever seen before.
You can easily replace your logon scripts with FastTrack scripts and show the users some great looking graphics with
your logo on it, while the script is running. And you don't have to deploy anything to the clients; just put our
free 50kb
FastTrack Logon in your NetLogon folder and point your users' logon script to the exe. FastTrack Logon will automatically distribute
the FastTrack engine and all your scripts to your clients and execute them. Your clients can now execute FastTrack scripts in general
without doing anything else. It's that simple!
The splash screen you see below requires just
one FastTrack script line. It will resolve the users' full name from the nearest
Domain Controller and you can optionally even use your own company logo.
This single script line as the first line in your logonscript script, will produce the splash screen above for a company named "Acme":
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Splash Welcome
to Acme,[UserFullName]
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[UserFullName] is a function that will be replaced by the full name of the current user.
So while the user sees only the splash screen, you can do the actual work.
Display a nice welcome screen, while you connect shares and printers based on Active Directory groups or
physical location (IP tables), synchronize corporate files to the users profile, backup users files, set
user hive registry settings based on installed applications, etc etc...and with unbelievable speed.
In the movie above, a backup is also performed of all the users' documents after showing the
splash screen. This is accomplished by adding only two additional lines to the script:
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Splash Backing
up your personal documents,Please wait...
SyncDir [UserDocumentsDir],[UserHomeDrive]\Backup
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To demonstrate how easy it is to create powerful and functional logon scripts, consider this single FastTrack logon script line:
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If UserIsMemberOf SalesStaff Then
ConnectShare J:,\\AcmeServer\SalesShare
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This one line tests if the user logging on, is member of the domain group SalesStaff and connects a share if he is.
To do the same in VBScript, it would require many script lines, as shown
here,
where this result is produced with VBScript. The same goes for everything else you would put in a logon
script; your FastTrack logon scripts will be extremely short and much more powerful than what you could do with VBScript or PowerShell.
Take a look in the
logonscript guide for more details of setting up Logon Scripts.
Backup and replication
One of more than 200 available commands is the SyncDir command.
It's a lightning fast data synchronizing command to replicate or backup data.
For instance you could do an automatic backup of the users' documents once a day with
a single script line
in your logonscript like this:
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If UserOnceADay
Then SyncDir [UserDocumentsDir],[UserHomeDir]\DocumentBackup
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This would automatically resolve the root of the user's documents folder, resolve the user's network share
and synchronize changes, ensuring a quick full backup of the users' documents once a day. All this is done with
the single script line above.
In the below example, a script is constructed to synchronize over 20.000 files, only copying changes. In a typical scenario, few
files are actually changed from one execution to the next, and synchronization with SyncDir will then be a matter of seconds to execute.
Script your Active Directory
For most Admins, scripting the Active Directory is too complex, but with FastTrack Scripting Host, the Active Directory complexities are gone.
There are more than 500 pre-build commands, functions, conditions and collections in version 6, whereof 130 are directly for Active Directory.
Below 8 examples out of 60 Active Directory commands to perform common operations. It's so simple that everyone can now script the Active Directory.
Check out
this example of a HelpDesk application, that combines the Active Directory functionality with
the build-in graphical user interfaces to produce a Windows like application, created solely with script lines (see screenshot further down).
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Create a user account:
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CreateUser AcmeUser,MyAcmePassword
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Set the description field of a user:
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SetUserDescription AcmeUser,Test user
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Delete a user account:
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DeleteUser AcmeUser
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Unlock a user account:
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UnlockUser AcmeUser
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Move a user to another OU:
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MoveUser AcmeUser,Acme Sales Europe
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Add a user to a group:
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AddUserToGroup AcmeUser,Acme Sales
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Remove a user from a group:
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RemoveUserFromGroup AcmeUser,Acme Sales
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Create a computer account with Workstation trust:
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CreateComputer AcmePC2419
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Installations
You can very easily script installations with FastTrack commands and it enables you to query installation status
of an application anywhere you want, for instance in the logon script, where you could set per-user settings or manipulate machine settings based
on installed applications. While you run the installation in the background, you could insert one script line in the top of the script to display a
nice splash screen while installing:
You may already have a management system like Microsoft Systems Management System (SMS) or Tivoli. In that case you can use it to distribute FastTrack installation
packages (a FastTrack script and your binaries), but if this is all you use your expensive management system for or you simply don't have one, there is
another approach. Take a look in the
Installations section for details on how to distribute software with or without a Management System with
just a few script lines. You will find examples of scripts there, for instance a template of just 9 scripts lines that installs and uninstalls an MSI package
and checks if was successful or not.
Administrative tasks
Administrative Tasks like replicating data between servers with the SyncDir command or creating Active Directory user can be scripted easily with FastTrack Scripting Host. There are build in
menus and icons that are easily referenced to create menus. Below an example that asks for desired operation and then jumps to the specific part
of the script based on the choice. Click
here to see the full script.
Connectivity scripts - offline logon scripts
Your domain enables you to execute scripts when computers are on the company LAN. But for portable computers, this is actually
not enough, if you think about it. You need to control portable computers when they are not on the company LAN too.
As a supplement to logon scripts, we offer you our completely free SmartDock connectivity
tool. When SmartDock is started, it detects when the computer changes an IP address and a script is then executed without user intervention.
This means that when the computer for instance is booted, resumes from standby, connects to VPN or a wireless network or any other scenario
where the computer changes IP settings, it trigs a script execution in the user's context. You can then for instance set or remove proxy settings
and connect company shares in case the computer is just resumed from standby on the company LAN. Especially if you have a proxy server,
this free tool is an absolute must instead of relying on the quirky IE autodetection.
Check out the SmartDock section for more details.
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Script editing
FastTrack Scripting Host comes with an amazing script editor.
It is completely customizable with Visual Studio-like dragable panels, syntax highlighting
and code completion. Writing scripts is extremely easy and a Context Helper senses
what you are doing and explains what is under the cursor. Check out our
Getting Started Guide for more information.
Licensing and Pricing
Licensing for FastTrack Scripting Host is per-seat, based on the number of computers executing a FastTrack script.
Pricing starts at $18.00 per seat at the entry level of 25 machines, dropping to $7.20 per seat at the 5,000-seat level.
Discounts may be available for qualifying government, education and non-profit organizations.
For detailed information, please click here.
FastTrack Scripting Host is continuously being recognized as a top pick around the world. Current
we have 30 awards. Click here for a
list of awards or here for some of our most
recent customer quotes.
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"
Your product rocks, you are without doubt changing the way admins script, this product is great and support is great as well.
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Ryan O'Connell, Roclee New Zealand
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