Solution for Actions not reapplying as expected

Tips
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If you want an action to reapply, those that stay relevant won’t reapply unless a particular setting is used:

This seems to be where this behavior is first discussed:

Using this setting basically forces the issue by making the action become non-relevant for a period of time after it is run. This would be a bad thing if it were an action that should only run once, but could be the desired case, like for some offers.

If when deploying an action (an offer in this example) in the Windows console, “Reapply this action” “When it becomes relevant again” and the relevance is set to TRUE (so that it is always true) then it will be available for the user to run once and only once. This is because the relevance never becomes FALSE and then TRUE again in the future.

If however “Reapply this action” “while relevant, waiting” “15 minutes” “between reapplications” then the action (an offer in this example) and the relevance is set to TRUE (so that it is always true) then it will be available for the user ALWAYS to run over and over and over again, but after the delay specified (15 minutes in this case). This is because choosing this option forces the relevance to become FALSE for 15 minutes after the action is applied, then TRUE again after that delay.

It is useful to realize that almost all of the options in the take action dialog’s execution tab just apply some extra relevance with parameters to the action. You can do something similar with custom applicability relevance but with complete control over the details.

Similar Issue:

Related:

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Just to add to your tip:

I use these settings frequently to create custom compliance actions, and for a custom User Rights Management (Temporary Local Administrator) workflow that BigFix manages.

A few caveats on this option:

Whenever It Becomes Relevant Again
The key word here is “Again”. When executing an action that may result in only a short window for the BES client to see the relevance become false, then true again, it is sometimes missed. In short, the action is not reapplied as the client never determined the relevance was ever false.

Typically you can tell if that’s the case by testing the action on a few devices and set the Success Criteria (Success Criteria tab under Take Action) to “…the applicability relevance evaluates to false.” If the action comes back as Failed, you see on the action log for the test devices that all lines of the action completed, and the exit code isn’t showing a different reason, your action may have executed and became relevant again before the client evaluated it.

While I’ve been told that the client should evaluate the properties involved when the action completes, I’ve had a few instances where I was able to disprove this statement.

While relevant, waiting:
This is perfect for applying an action (or offer) repetitively. However, you might want to consider a baseline instead of using a singular action. As JGStew pointed out, it doesn’t care if the action relevance ever showed as False, it just knows that the relvance is still true after the time you specificed in the drop down to the right of the option.

That said, Great Tip!

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I have also had this exact problem, and I fixed it by using While relevant, waiting: instead of When it becomes relevant again

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Brilliant! and brilliantly simple…

And it works like a charm.

Thanks JG.

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