Update Inventory not showing in Self Service

[corbinmharris]

I enabled the Self Service option for the Update Inventory policy. However, when I refresh Self Service, the policy isn not showing up. I have it scoped to all Macs. The reason for having the Update Inventory policy to allow remote users to force their Macs to check in while connected to our VPN to get software and policy updates.

Any ideas on why it doesn't show?

Thanks!

[scottb]

Is it set to "Ongoing"?

[corbinmharris]

Nevermind.....I had the policy set for "Once a day" :(

[stevewood]

@corbin3ci be careful, because if you still have it set for "At next check-in" or whatever other trigger you have, then you are likely to get a lot of inventory checks by your computers. For example, if your inventory policy was set to "At next", which I believe is the default, then by switching to "Ongoing" your machines are going to do inventory checks each time they check in. That may not be a bad thing, but it could cause your machines to slow down a hair.

Might be better to duplicate the standard inventory policy and make it a Self Service only policy.

[mm2270]

Agreed with @stevewood. We have similar policies set up in our Self Service, but not with the default Inventory collection policy. That one was left as is, and we set up a new one just for Self Service. Its set to an Ongoing frequency, but is called by a manual trigger, not the normal items like check in or login, etc. So the policy is scoped to All Computers, set as a Self Service item and will get run only by that manual trigger, i.e, when the user initiates it from Self Service. That might be the setup you;re looking for.

[scottb]

We do exactly what @mm2270 posted above. Works great.

[mm2270]

@corbin3ci In looking back at your original post, if you're using any version of Casper Suite 9, you might want to take a look at the Network State Change trigger and couple it with an inventory policy. That will mean that when your Macs connect to VPN, since their network state has changed, the local daemon on the Mac will get triggered and try to run an inventory collection policy. That would potentially prevent the need to have users manually submitting inventory after they've connected in.

You might have to experiment to see what will be the best setup if you decide to use that. Obviously the policy will also get triggered whenever a mobile Mac outside the org walls connects to something like a Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspot, but would not be able to run the policy unless your JSS is externally facing in some way. I'm assuming its not or you may not need to do what you're doing around VPN connection and inventory updates. But it may be a better option since it'll run silently when they connect into VPN.