Command reference
Overseer gives scripts a set of helper commands, so common jobs do not have to be written from scratch. This page describes the kinds of help they cover.
Why helper commands exist
Much of a script is the same few jobs repeated: read a value, compare it with the one you want, change it, check it again. Written by hand, each job takes several lines.
A helper command does the whole job in one line and behaves the same way in every script. Many helpers understand the three jobs of a task: reading a setting, checking it and correcting it. One line then serves all three.
What the helpers cover
- Registry values. Read a value, compare it with the value you want and set it, creating any missing key on the way. This includes values kept in the signed-in user's own part of the registry.
- Files and settings files. Make sure a file is present in a folder and replace it when its contents differ. Change a single setting inside an XML file.
- Work on the computer. From a script on the Overseer server, send work to the computer, as the system or as the user, with a time limit, to one computer or several at once. Results come back as objects.
- Computers and inventory. Look up computers by client or by what inventory records about them, and refresh a computer's inventory details.
- Integrations. Read the record an integration holds for a computer, or fetch the token needed to install another tool's agent.
- Notifications. Send an email in Overseer's style to a session's usual recipients or to people you name.
- Checks on results. Confirm that a lookup found exactly one item, and stop with a clear error when it did not.
Using them well
Helpers that test and set values run from a script on the Overseer server, which directs the computer. That is also the place for work that has to continue after a restart.
Before you write a helper of your own, search the built-in scripts in the Script Editor. They show these commands at work.