How to Remove a Step from an Operating System Deployment Group

Article
10/04/2022

In Configuration Manager, you delete a step (an action or a group) from an operating system deployment task sequence group by deleting the step from the group's list of task sequence steps.

To remove a step from a group

Set up a connection to the SMS Provider. For more information, see SMS Provider fundamentals.
Get the SMS_TaskSequence_Group object that you want to add the step to. For more information, see How to Create an Operating System Deployment Task Sequence Group.
Remove the action from the SMS_TaskSequence_Group.Steps array property.

Example

The following example method removes an action from a task sequence group.

For information about calling the sample code, see Calling Configuration Manager Code Snippets.

Sub RemoveActionFromGroup(taskSequenceGroup, actionName)  

    Dim i  

    If taskSequenceGroup.SystemProperties_("__CLASS")<>"SMS_TaskSequence_Group" Then  
        wscript.echo "Not a group"  
        return  
    End If  

        Dim newArray  
        Dim actionStep  

        newArray = Array(taskSequenceGroup.Steps)  
        ReDim newArray(UBound(taskSequenceGroup.Steps))  

        i=0  
        for each  actionStep in taskSequenceGroup.Steps  
            If actionStep.Name = actionName and _  
              actionStep.SystemProperties_("__SUPERCLASS") = "SMS_TaskSequence_Action" Then  
                 ReDim preserve newArray(UBound(newArray)-1) ' shrink the Array  
            else  
               wscript.echo actionStep.Name  
               Set newArray(i)=actionStep ' copy it  
               i=i+1  
            End If     

         Next  

         taskSequenceGroup.Steps=newArray  

 End Sub

public void RemoveActionFromGroup(  
    IResultObject taskSequenceGroup,   
    string actionName)  
{  
    try  
    {  
        if (taskSequenceGroup["__CLASS"].StringValue != "SMS_TaskSequence_Group")  
        {  
            throw new System.InvalidOperationException("Not a group");  
        }  

        List<IResultObject> groupSteps = taskSequenceGroup.GetArrayItems("Steps");  
        IResultObject actionFound = null;  
        foreach (IResultObject actionStep in groupSteps)  
        {  
            if (actionStep["Name"].StringValue == actionName && actionStep["__SUPERCLASS"].StringValue == "SMS_TaskSequence_Action")  
            {  
                actionFound = actionStep;  
                break;  
            }  
        }  

        groupSteps.Remove(actionFound);  
        taskSequenceGroup.SetArrayItems("Steps", groupSteps);  
    }  
    catch (SmsException e)  
    {  
        Console.WriteLine("Failed to remove action: " + e.Message);  
        throw;  
    }  
}

The example method has the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
`taskSequenceGroup`	- Managed: IResultObject - VBScript: SWbemObject	The task sequence group containing the action to be deleted.
`actionName`	- Managed: `String` - VBScript: `String`	The name of the action to be deleted. This can be obtained from the SMS_TaskSequenceAction.Name property.

Compiling the Code

This C# example requires:

Namespaces

System

System.Collections.Generic

System.Text

Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider

Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider.WqlQueryEngine

Assembly

microsoft.configurationmanagement.managementprovider

adminui.wqlqueryengine

Robust Programming

For more information about error handling, see About Configuration Manager Errors.

.NET Framework Security

For more information about securing Configuration Manager applications, see Configuration Manager role-based administration.