Maintenance Window Dashboard

We are trying to automate our monthly server reboots. We’ve tried many things but none seem to be a set it and forget it solution, which is what we are looking for.

We recently were introduced to the Maintenance Window Dashboard. There isn’t much documentation available on this other than what I could find here: http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/maintenancewindow.html

What we are hoping to be able to do is set a reboot job, on a set schedule, and repeat it monthly. Simple, at least one would think.

I started playing with the Maintenance Window Dashboard this AM and it appears as though it sets some properties on the client that may be what we are looking for. Excellent!
However, when I select the Reboot Task and take Action on it, it doesn’t allow me to any of the properties that the MWD sets. I’m trying to use the “Run Only When” option on the execution tab and select the MaintenanceWindow_Name but it doesn’t appear.

Is this not what this dashboard is intended for?

Any further documentation or explanation would be greatly appreciated. My work around is setting up a reboot job manually every month for 20+ reboot times.

Cheers!

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I haven’t played around with maintenance windows in this particular fashion (I always used them for client locking).

Could you just modify the relevance of the restart computers fixlet (Make a copy of it) to check the value of that client parameter? That way the fixlet itself is only relevant when the machine is in its maintenance window and you don’t have to worry about the limited number of properties that appear on the action screen.

Does that make sense?

This isn’t specific to the Maintenance Window Dashboard, for any property to appear as a selectable constraint in the TAD it must be a global property (not from an analysis) AND it must be one of your selected columns in the Computers view. Typically, you would use the “In Maintenance Window” property when it matches “True” as the constraint so that each system will execute it when their maintenance window is reached.

If you want to also limit it only a subset of window names, I would select those as the “Target by Property” on the Target tab.

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