Add Icons to a User's Dock via ARD

When performing a mass deployment of a software application, the hardest part is actually deploying the software. The second part is adding dock icons to the user's dock for the new applications. This could have been very useful for me when I was deploying Adobe CS3 or Microsoft Office 2008. However, finding this tool now will make software deployments even easier with a little less confusion for the end-user.

The tool is very appropriately called AddItemToDock. Its a very small tool, no GUI, simple command line. This application can be pushed out as an installer package, allowing you to send a simple command to add whatever applications to the dock that you want.

The usage for this tool is very simple. So simple in fact, that I'll just tell you what it is.

• additemtodock [application path] [application2 path] [application3 path] ... [applicationN path].

So if you wanted to add Calculator.app to the dock, you could simply run the command

• additemtodock /Applications/Calculator.app

You can add more applications in one command if you needed to or just multiple additemtodock commands.

The one drawback that I did find was that the command can only work under the current logged on user. So it won't work if the computer is sitting on the logon screen. Also, if you run the command as the root user, it adds the shortcut to the root user's dock.

If there's a more automated way of doing this, I'd love to hear it. Post a comment and let me know of software deployment techniques that you use is your environment.