KACE as a Service 7.1 - Administrator Guide

Name

A name that identifies the schedule. This name appears on the Patch Schedules page.

Action

Select Detect. The page updates to the appropriate options.

The patch action behavior is dependent on the combination of reboot, detect, deploy, and rollback selections you make. Whenever a patch action does both a Detect pass and something else, as is the case with Detect and Deploy and Detect and Rollback, the action is repeated cyclically until the Detect action finds no further patches to deploy or roll back. This behavior might result in multiple Reboot actions for a single scheduled run. In addition, the type of device you are patching affects the type of patch action to use.

All Devices

Run the schedule on all devices. If the Organization component is enabled on your appliance, this schedule includes all devices in the selected organization.

Use this setting with caution. It is usually better to test patch actions on a limited number of devices, and to limit patch actions to selected devices or device labels. This limitation ensures that patch actions are applied appropriately.

NOTE: This option only appears if the Hide All Devices check box on the General Settings page is not selected.

Device Labels

Restrict the patch actions to the devices in the labels that you select. Limiting the run to labels, especially Smart Labels, helps to ensure that patches are applied appropriately.

For example, some application patches have the ability to install applications as well as update applications that are already installed. To prevent the appliance from installing the application on devices that do not already have the application installed, you can create a Smart Label to identify devices that have the application. You can then limit the patch action to devices that have that label. The patch is then applied only to devices that already have the application installed.

To use this option, you must already have created labels or Smart Labels. See Using Smart Labels for patching.

Devices

Run detect and deploy patch actions on the devices that you select. To search for devices, begin typing in the field.

Operating Systems

Select the operating systems of the devices on which you want to run the actions. The default is all operating systems.

All Patches

Detect all available patches. This process can take a long time. Also, it might detect patches for software that is not installed on, or required by, managed devices. For example, if managed devices use anti-virus applications from only one vendor, you might not need to detect patches for all anti-virus vendors. All Patches, however, detects all missing patches regardless of whether they are required by managed devices. To refine patch detection, set up labels for the patches you want to detect, then use the Patch Labels option.

Patch Labels

Restrict the action to the patches in the labels that you select. This is the most commonly used patch detection option. To select labels, click Edit. To use this option, you must already have labels or Smart Labels for the patches you want to detect. See Using Smart Labels for patching.

None

Run in combination with an event rather than on a specific date or at a specific time. This option is useful if you want to patch servers manually, or perform patch actions that you do not want to run on a schedule.

Every _ hours

Run at a specified interval.

Every day/specific day at HH:MM

Run daily at a specified time, or run on a designated day of the week at a specified time.

Run on the nth of every month/specific month at HH:MM

Run on the nth day every month, (for example, the first or the second) day of every month, or a specific month, at the specified time.

Custom

Run according to a custom schedule.

Use standard 5-field cron format (extended cron format is not supported):

Use the following when specifying values:

Examples:

Timezone

The timezone to use when scheduling the action. Select Server to use the timezone of the appliance. Select Agent to use the timezone of the managed device.

Run on next connection if offline

Run the action the next time the managed device connects to the appliance, if the device is currently offline. This option is useful for laptops and other devices that are periodically offline. If this option is not selected, and the device is offline, the action does not run again until the next scheduled time.

Delay run after reconnect

Delay the schedule by a specified amount of time. The time delay period begins when the patch action is scheduled to run.

End after

The time limit for patching actions.

For example, if you schedule patches to run at 04:00, you might want all patching actions to stop at 07:00 to prevent bandwidth issues when users start work. To do so, you could specify 180 in the minutes box.

When this time limit is reached, any patching tasks that are in progress are suspended, and their status on Security logs is Suspended.

These patching tasks do not resume on the next run and instead start from the beginning with each scheduled patching action.