one request what was brought to me by our support guys was that it would be great if a user can actually see a more detailed deployment message and also while a patch gets downloaded. The reason is that mobile users will have slower links and often switch of the machine during download. If the user would see that a patch is downloaded (maybe even “Patch x of y is currently downloaded”) he could leave the machine on, until the deployment is done.
That would greatly raise the patch status on mobile machines.
A few of our customers have built custom client interfaces to allow their end users to see more detailed deployment information, but most customers just push the patches/packages to mobile computers and let the download arrive whenever it is connected long enough (don’t forget the BES Client does automatic download restarts where it left off at when disconnected).
Something else you can try:
Create a baseline to run all the actions you are looking for.
Put a message (choose any/all of pre/during/post messages) on the baseline action that says something like: "We are beginning a process of pushing patches to your computer, please don’t disconnect from the network if possible.
Hopefully that is a usable workaround for now.
We have a policy of not publicly discussing major roadmap items, but a full-feature regarding this type of notification has come up in discussions before.
You might look at the “Offers” capabilities in BigFix 7.0 to see if they meet your needs. With offers, the end-user can pick when to deploy the action.