IBM i Access Client Solutions

You know those software packages which scan your users systems and tell you what versions they are running?  This way you can tell if they are running an older version of Word or something you can get them upgraded?

I'm looking for a way to tell what version of iACS is running on end users machines that these services can easily digest.

Those packages have an easier time of it with installed Windows applications.  ACS (other than the Windows Application Package) isn't a Windows application that is installed.  Rather it is a Java application that is deployed.  IBM provides some deployment scripts for Windows that will deploy the client to

%USERPROFILE%\IBM\ClientSolutions 

or

%PUBLIC%\IBM\ClientSolutions

And within that deployed directory is a Documentation directory with a readmespacs.txt file contains information about all of the updates.  It is cumulative and will contain many versions but the first one, at the top of the file, is the version that is deployed in that directory path.

Something like

find "Version" %PUBLIC%\IBM\ClientSolutions\Documentation\readmespacs.txt

will dump the version information.  If you have a 'head' equivalent for Windows you can strip off just the first entry.

Of course the real wrinkle is that there are as many ways to deploy a java application as there are people deploying it.  Many admins will deploy the client to a network server so that it only needs to be updated in one place (at the expense of a whole lot more network traffic and latency for all of the users).