Difference between Compliance reports and Inventory reports, when tracking Managed Software Delivery Policies

Products

• IT Management Suite
• Client Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

An administrator wanted to look at Compliance Reporting versus Inventory reports for some software they were pushing out using Managed Software Delivery (MSD) policies.  The Policy was targeting systems using Add / Remove Programs data (this was actually an uninstall Policy, but could also be used as an Install policy).

Cause

Compliance Data is only as accurate as the last time the policy executed. 

Inventory data is accurate as last time Inventory ran.

Resolution

The difference in this case was that the Policy was targeting an Inventory data class, and removing systems from the Filter when the Inventory met their settings.   So the Policy stopped executing at some point.  The issue with this was that the Compliance checks no longer ran when the systems dropped out of the Filter.

So - best practice is to keep the Policy running on systems until the desired result is achieved.  

Compliance reports depend on Policy Execution of the Detection Check.  Inventory reports depend on having updated inventory.  Best results are achieved when reports that Management relies on mimic the Production method of implementation.