The new feature pack has finally been released in first public beta. I have installed the beta in my test environment and will the next couple of weeks post a few blogs on my experience with release. First a few notes on the installation:

Configmgr 2007 R3 beta requirements:

• R3 beta can only be installed on a ConfigMgr SP2
• R3 beta can only be installed on an evaluation copy of ConfigMgr. 2007

ConfigMgr 2007 R3 features

• Power Management
• Collection/discovery improvements
• New OEM task sequence media
• Support for 300.000 clients in a hierarchy

The Installation

The installation process is straight forward, the usual License terms and Next, Next, Finish. Once the installation is complete you do need to upgrade the existing clients with a new patch. The client upgrade package will be created as part of the installation.

The new client version number is 4.00.6487.2119

The new reports

The new reports come as a cab file containing RDL files. RDL files are used in SQL Reporting Services (the only supported reporting platform for vNext). To install the reports you can:

1. Navigate to Computer Management, Reporting
2. Right click the SQL Reporting Server and select Copy Reports to Reporting Services
3. In the wizard click next twice until the Select Reports is shown. Select Import Report Definition Language file from a Microsoft signed cabinet file and click Browse.
    
4. The cab file is placed in .\Program files (x86)\Configuration Manager\Reports\Power Management
5. Click Next a few times to import the reports
   
   
6. The new power management reports are now imported and ready to be used

New Client agent

Before you can start using the Power Management feature you need to enable the new Power Management Agent. Power Management can be controlled on each Collection; but not until the Power Management client has been enbaled.