Client Automation - Automate a Software Package to rerun every day at a specific time

Products

• CA Client Automation - IT Client Manager
• CA Client Automation

Issue/Introduction

Using Client Automation, how do I automate a Software Package to re-run every day at a specific time?

Environment

Client Automation - All versions

Resolution

In order to provide this kind of automation, we will use a Software Based Policy.

Create or identify an existing Computer Group that the software policy will get linked.

This example will follow this group:

Create a new Software Based policy:

Choose a software package from the list:

Choose the groups that the policy will be linked:

Provide a name for the policy and check the box to reveal the advanced settings:

As the endstate is to achieve a policy that will run a software at a specific time, it's recommended to increase the priority of the policy, in order for it to be evaluated ahead of normal software job activity:

Ensure the job is configured for full automation:

Here is the keystone step.  In this example, we want the policy evaluated at 6AM every day, to setup and activate jobs to targets in the linked software group.  Thus the activation time is TODAY, at 6:00AM, and is configured to update exactly every 24 hours.

Tip: Evaluation of the Software Policy does not indicate this is the time the job will execute on the target agent.  Many factors have to be considered, such as number of targets, number of scalability servers, whether or not the software package is staged on all scalability servers involved, and how busy the System Delivery Engine (SD Task Manager) is with processing other tasks.

Thus it might be a good idea to specify some lead time on the policy evaluation.  If you want the job to run at 6AM every day, it might be best to specify the policy evaluation at 5:50AM.

It is also highly recommended to have the Software Package staged, to avoid delays waiting for DTS to transfer the package to all scalability servers required for the job to execute.

On the final step, since we want this job to recur every day, we need to ensure we instruct the software policy to remove existing installation records for this package/procedure, in order to allow the same package/procedure to be re-pushed to the target system: