The Zenworks 11 documentation states that an Agent needs a full refresh before a bundle can be distributed properly:

NOTE:At device startup, the ZENworks Adaptive Agent contacts a ZENworks Server according to the device’s refresh schedule to refresh its bundle, policy, configuration, and registration information. If information changes, the Adaptive Agent must refresh its information before the changes can show up on the device, even if one of the event triggers occur. By default, devices refresh randomly between 300 and 360 seconds after device startup with a full refresh every 12 hours.

For example, if you create a bundle and schedule it to launch when the device connects to the network, the device must be manually refreshed or refreshed according to schedule before the Adaptive Agent can upload or launch the bundle, even if the device connects to the network.


We've had numerous times where bundles didn't get distributed as a result of the above disclaimer. When we used Zenworks 7 in the Netware days we didn't have this problem. When telling an application to distribute when logging in, it did just that. No refreshes required, etc. We feel that Zenworks 11 should work the same way. In order to get around the above problem we would have to set our Adaptive Agent refresh rates to something like 15 minutes. Even that wouldn't catch all scenarios. Say we discovered something after hours (all pcs are shutdown) that required a bundle distribution to correct it on each pc when the user logs in in the morning. With the way Zenworks works now we would have to wait for each client to refresh for the users to receive this critical change. That doesn't seem remotely realistic when you're in a critical situation where something needs distributed immediately. In our production environment users aren't will to wait to get started working provided they get a bundle distribution when they login.

Please consider this when developing future releases.

by: Tim E. | over a year ago | Application Mgmt