Issue when deploying larger .pkg's via policy

[bclaringbold]

Using Jamf Pro - Hosted 10.17.1

Higher education site. As such we have computers labs of 35 systems.

When setting a policy to install a larger application (ie Adobe CC 2020 / Microsoft Office) we using a recurring check-in policy. The policy will start to download at various times as expected but on some systems will never install successfully and then report as failed in the policy log. Sometimes it fails after 10 minutes sometimes after several hours (2+). The policy will work on some systems but will fail on others. Its not the same systems failing each time.

The log states the the network connection was lost but these are desktop computers with wired network connections.

Side note: Why if a policy fails will Jamf not try to install the policy again? Is this a setting i am missing? As of now i have to check the policy log and flush out the failed policy?

[alexjdale]

You are correct, the policy will not try to run again "if failed" because that is not an option like other management tools offer (such as SCCM).

For this reason, we either flush failures periodically during deployment, or use a "control script" that handles it. For example, a simple control script could examine the system, see if the app is present, and either quit out or try again using a trigger policy. You'd want to use Smart Group scoping to remove a device from the policy scope once it's been successful.

[sdagley]

Not quite correct. If the installation policy's execution frequency is set to run once per computer it will not re-run automatically if it fails. If you set the execution frequency to Ongoing, create a Smart Group that identifies computers with the application installed, and use that group as a scope exclusion for the installation policy then it will keep trying to install until successful (be sure to update inventory in your install policy with this approach)