IGEL OS Creator for Windows (OSCW) - Enhanced

For those that don't know, IGEL have a Windows agent capable of converting Windows 7, 10 & 11 devices to OS11/12 - check it out here: IGEL OS Creator for Windows (OSCW)

Now this agent does a fantastic job of converting devices but requires some very specific conditions to in order for it to be usable. The pre-requisites can be found here: OSCW Prerequisites.

The main requirement that can hinder conversions is the fact that "All machines are in a network that can be reached by the UMS."

Why is this a problem?

Recently I was talking with a customer about how to convert remote devices in the easiest way possible. As we talked through the options available such as UDPocket, Bootable Installation Media, OSCW Agent it was clear that the first 2 options were not going to be suitable. Why? Imagine 200 devices, all working from home offices - That's a lot of home visits or sending USB devices around in the post!

The OSCW Agent would be of been ideal except for the home office part. Many of the users do not use a VPN and have no network access to the UMS. As the UMS cannot find the installed agent, send the required configuration files and instruct the agent to convert the device this wouldn't work.

Thinking outside the box

Now one thing the team at Workspace IT are fantastic at is "Thinking outside the box". So I started working through what I would need to cut out the need for the UMS but still utilise the OSCW.

One thing many customers have these days is an internet enabled remote management tool such as Microsoft Intune, ManageEngine, etc. Why is this important? Well because we can push software, updates and configurations to them without any direct network access...

After some investigation into how the OSCW agent works, some digging into Grub boot loaders and working through the requirements with the Application Packaging team at Workspace IT - we did it!

The Solution

We created an application that can be deployed by any application deployment tool that will enable remote conversion of a Windows device without the need for any physical visits. Without any user interaction at all if you wish.

We created 2 versions of this application:

• 1 - Provides a start menu entry that will allow the user to initiate the conversion when they are ready
• 2 - Installs and gives a 15 minute countdown until the conversion starts automatically

See it in action

In this example, the application is deployed via Manage Engine:

Now the application has deployed successfully we can see the newly created Start Menu entry on the Windows device:

When the user clicks the entry as they are ready to convert, they get an intrusive countdown window until the conversion begins. Once the countdown has reached zero or the user clicked restart now, the process begins.

Upton restart, the IGEL installation begins as pictured: (This is an unattended install)

The IGEL Installation finishes and restarts for a final time.

The Device boots into its newly installed IGEL OS and begins the onboarding process. Once onboarding is complete the device restarts itself and is ready for the user to continue working from their newly installed IGEL OS. Hooray!

To see the full onboarding process give the 2 minute video below a watch.

This solved our customers problem and made the roll-out of IGEL OS12 incredibly hands off.

Disclaimer - This is not officially supported by IGEL, it was purpose built to provide a workaround to the problem detailed above.

Outside the box thinking -> Expert technical staff -> Happy Customer