I’ve created a baseline that is composed of several custom tasks. I’m having an issue with clients reporting that the baseline is relevant, but when the baseline is deployed to the client, the response is Not Relevant.
I checked each individual task, and these clients are reporting relevant on each.
I’ve successfully deployed this baseline to several hundred devices, and I’m confused as to how a client can be relevant for a baseline, and all of its sub-tasks, but respond as being Not Relevant for the deployment.
Have you checked the relevancy of each task within the baseline? (edit the baseline, view the tasks and expand each of them. Each one has their own relevancy checkbox). See if that fixes it.
Yeah, I checked that. One of the sub-tasks does not have the box checked for “Baseline will be relevant on applicable computers where this component is relevant”. Not sure if that is the culprit.
I also checked relevance on each of the tasks from the Tasks tab, independent of the baseline.
So, a client that shows as relevant for…
The baseline
Sub-Task 1 in the Tasks tab
Sub-Task 2 in the Tasks tab
… still reports as “Not Relevant” when the baseline is deployed.
I guess the most confusing part is that I’ve deployed this baseline to a lot of clients successfully. If there was something amiss with the baseline setup, I think I would have seen more of this behavior earlier.
We visited one of the client machines, and the user claims the device was off at the time of the deployment. These jobs are scheduled during the day to run during non-business hours. Is it possible for the device status to be “Waiting”, and then if the client is not available during the deployment window, the end result is “Not Relevant”?
Do the custom Fixlets have relevance that can change easily (such as “pending restart”, relevance based on current user, relevance based on time of day, etc.)?
Possibly. They are Tasks, and the relevance is based on existing registry keys and the absence of a running service. It’s a software install, and if the keys are not there and the service not running, we install.
For the most part, we’re not having any issues with the deployment. Seeing more devices with a status of “” even though the last report time for the client is recent. And a handful of “Not Relevant” clients, even though all portions of the baseline indicate relevance.
We re-deployed the baseline to some of these “Not Relevant” devices, and it worked the second time.
Examined some of the devices and found that the action had actually completed, even though the status at the time the job expired was still “Not Relevant”.
If a baseline contains relevance that toggles often (such as the need for pending restart, time based relevance, etc.) OR if an earlier Fixlet in a baseline contains a change that will cause later Fixlets in the baseline not to be relevant, than you might see some “Not Relevant” results like you mentioned… The basic reason for this is that the agent notices that the Baseline is relevant and goes to run it, but by the time it gets to run each sub-action, the status might have changed and the agent will report “Not Relevant” at this time.