Once the Symantec Management Agent is functional (has a GUID, received policies), what happens regarding the Altiris Client Task Agent?
Environment
ITMS 8.x
Resolution
This is the simplified flow of what happens:
Task agent talks with SMP server to see which task server it should communicate with
Establishes a connection to the preferred task server returned by SMP
By default you will get the FQDN Name of the Task server
You can change this behaviour by editing the NSPreferredHost setting in NSConfigurator
Listens to the task server
Task can:
Install / uninstall Software
Run scripts
Gather inventory
Install or uninstall a plugin
The big selling point of Task server is that it is much faster than policy based deployments. You can get activity in seconds versus minutes or even hours by deploying with a Policy.
Additional Information
"Symantec Management Agent Communication overview" (KB 256573)