Useful script example on Fortimanager

This is a question I have been pursuing for some time and have found very little.  Here is one resource I did find with some practical use cases (it may be a little dated):  http://www.fortihelp.com/search/label/TCL

The above resource and the examples in the admin guide are quite helpful with regard to scripting changes directly on FortiGate units.  However, performing changes directly against your FortiGates will bring your FortiManager device database and policy packages out of sync.  You are then forced to re-import / synchronize policy packages. 

It seems like the answer to this is to use the exec_ondb procedure (mentioned in the admin guide) to make changes directly to the device database and policy packages on the FortiManager.  Once that central policy is changed you could then push it out to all your FortiGate devices.  But the admin guide has no practical examples of this.  At this moment I am stuck on the syntactical differences between the exec and exec_ondb commands.  If I ever get past this issue I may post about it.

But I agree with your original sentiment: this looks like an incredibly powerful tool if I just knew how to use it properly.