Will NetSend notifications be integrated soon? Missing my nice handy dandy alerts for finished jobs.
The NetSend notifications have been discontinued (Growl is no longer supported either). There were issues with the feature, like not getting your notifications if the launcher is running as a service. Going forward, email will be the only notification system that is coded into Deadline. It’s part of our new policy to no longer hard code support for 3rd party applications into Deadline. It’s the same reason that VNC and RDC support have been moved to scripts.
The Event plugin system could be used to customize your own notification system (using Growl, Jabber, etc). You could handle OnJobFinished and OnJobFailed events to send the appropriate notifications. We will probably look at including examples that work out of the box at some point, but we won’t have time to do this for 6.0.
Cheers,
- Ryan
+1 for example code / snippets when possible 
In that case we need custom property keys for users like we have for jobs so that we can associate computer names with users.
+1 for having a built-in method of associating Deadline users with system users (LDAP, AD, etc.), though I would say it may be worth having as a built-in property as opposed to storing it on a custom block.
Does Deadline already have a way of using the login name as the Deadline user account?
Yup. In the Repository Options, under User Security, check the checkbox in the Enhanced User Security section.
Sooo I decided to try and learn the event plugin structure by writing one real quick and I ran into a problem. Net Send isn’t in Windows 7/Vista/Xp Sp3 so it’s effectively dead. MSG can’t send messages to other machines… so I assume the old notification system in windows was through the launcher. But if you were using the launcher that means you were executing it locally on the user’s machine correct? Something like MSG * Job finished! But surely there is no way to execute remote commands through the event python scripts on a remote launcher, otherwise there would be a massive security hole in any deadline installed system. So how do you suggest creating a pop-up on a remote machine?
You can use a notification tool like growl or jabber.
There is a windows version of growl:
growlforwindows.com/gfw/
There are python bindings for growl as well:
github.com/kfdm/gntp/
Basically, you’ll need some sort of service running on your workstations that you can send the message to, and then they can display the message.
Now that the launcher is multi-platform wouldn’t it make sense to add a super basic pop-up window app as part of launcher to let it post messages to a session?
Yes it can. Unless it’s broken.
It won’t work though if the launcher is running as a service.
It requires Terminal Services to be enabled. Which I tried enabling but then it also requires an administrator logged in to receive the message.
If the launcher is running as a service then it’s probably not a user controlled system that needs to receive a notification.
We can’t assume that. Many of our clients run the Launcher as a service on their workstations.
Well they can find another solution. 
Or can’t you just call msg “message” from the service?
Ok here is what I’m envisioning.
deadlinelib.servers.sendMSG(“Job %s is finsihed etc balh blahblah”,“Render-14”)
On the launcher side it takes string “blah blah blah” and executes locally “msg * STRING” I just tested this and it works even as a service. It’ll “bubble” up to the top.
That way you avoid all of the nasty exposure to running arbitrary remote commands and you can still push a message to another machine.
But MSG is Windows only…
On a Windows only farm, you could definitely use MSG from an event plugin to send your messages though.
I’ve been trying to use msg and it isn’t working. Apparently it can only msg admin users with remote terminal enabled.