Reviewed on 03/02/2021

Purpose:

You want PDQ Deploy to wake computers at a specific time; for example, to run updates or deploy packages (requires Pro or Enterprise license for PDQ Deploy and PDQ Inventory)..

Resolution:

1. In PDQ  Deploy, go to Options > Preferences > Deployments. In the Offline Status section, enable “Use Ping for Offline Testing” and “Send Wake-on-LAN to Offline Computers”.

NOTE: This is a global setting and will affect all deployments. 

Once set, your deployment packages will all attempt to wake offline machines.

If you would prefer not to set this globally it can also be set at the package level by going to the package properties "Offline Settings" tab to only be enabled for a specific package.

2. Create a package in Deploy that will have an inert effect on the target machine like a “dir” command:  

3. Create a schedule for the “dir” package that meets your requirements (for example, wake computers first thing in the morning or wake computers for a  maintenance window after hours).

IMPORTANT: In the Options tab of the schedule there is a checkbox to “Stop deploying to computers once they succeed”. If this box is checked and the schedule runs, all computers that succeeded will be put into the Computer History tab. Those computers will not be deployed to again until that record is removed.  To prevent this manual removal, make sure that box is not checked. (The same is true if this were a scheduled Shutdown or Reboot package).

See also:

Wake on LAN with PDQ Inventory