If your organization requires the use of Smart Card logons then you may see the error "Warning Report - Smartcard logon is required and was not used" when you create your deployment or background service credentials. Since PDQ Deploy runs as a Windows Service a Smart Card only account cannot be used for credentials (since a smartcard is used for an interactive user logon and is removed from the card reader when the user logs off). In order to use PDQ Deploy 1.4 or higher credentials need to be supplied for a user account that doesn't have a requirement to use a smart card. These accounts are often referred to as "service accounts".
Service accounts are regular user accounts in Windows, however, they are used to run specific services such as Microsoft Exchange, SCCM and, in this case, PDQ Deploy. The service account(s) used must have Administrative access on the PDQ Deploy console machine as well as any target computers.
Let's say that you use a Smart Card to log in to Windows and your user name is Nick.Cave in the Melbourne domain. Since Nick.Cave must log on with a Smart Card you have an account created called PDQDeploy in the Melbourne domain. (Melbourne\PDQDeploy). This PDQDeploy account does NOT have the requirement to log on with a Smart Card.
