Is there a way to specify an Action Preset when using the REST API to start an action? Every time I start an action, it uses whatever is default which is not ideal for some of the actions I am wanting to start via API. I have an action that will be sent out to a few thousand systems and prefer to stagger the deployment over a couple of hours for various reasons. I’ve searched around and cannot find a way to either specify the stagger via API or specify a custom Action Preset to use. I did set a default Action Preset within the action settings lock, but it ignores those values when started via API.
While there isn’t a method to specify an action preset when using the REST API (since you can effectively achieve a similar effect by programmatically configuring the action XML), you can certainly configure a staggered deployment via the REST API: please see the ‘TemporalDistribution’ field in the XML schema definition as reference.
Here’s a simple settings section that includes a 1 hour stagger:
<Settings>
<HasTemporalDistribution>true</HasTemporalDistribution>
<TemporalDistribution>PT1H</TemporalDistribution>
</Settings>
One approach that I find can often help in such cases is to take an existing action (or even Fixlets for example) with the desired configuration/parameters, and exporting it to a file. This then will allow you to reference the resulting XML, and to adapt it for your use via the API as necessary.
Thanks so much for the quick response!
Just tried the stagger as you suggested and it works great. I’ll try your suggestion of exporting an existing action to tweak things further.