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Is There a Way for PC's to Pull Packages with a Script?

Okay, I know it is possible to script a command for a particular package and run it from a client PC. This could be added as a startup/login script or scheduled task I am sure.

What I am wondering is has anyone found a good way of having a PC check something like a list of needed packages and then run the commands for those needed packages? It would need to remove the name from the list so it wouldn't keep redeploying.

I have some PC's that there is only a small window of time to do the deployment or don't come online real often so it would be nice when they do that they could go out and look what packages are needed and run them.

I know Inventory has heartbeat, but I don't have this available and it really isn't quite what I am looking for anyhow I don't believe.

Seems like it should be possible a script and maybe a TXT list to check. Just not really sure how to accomplish it.

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  • Hi Justin,

    I think that for the situation that you describe, a heartbeat trigger is your best option.

    Managing offline computers with Heartbeat Trigger | PDQ

    While not exactly what you are asking about, we have a blog that covers using PDQ Deploy from MDT that may have some other useful information for you. How to use MDT imaging in PDQ Deploy | PDQ

    "You can use a PowerShell script in conjunction with MDT to trigger a PDQ deployment targeting the machine MDT is imaging for those cases where you want to have newly-imaged machines ready to distribute to your users."

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  • Hi Andrew,

    I was thinking Heartbeat was probably the best option, but don't have it available at this time. Hopefully soon. The only down side is from my understanding it only triggers after a user is logged in and I believe I read it checks every 5 minutes or something like. It would probably still work just fine in most cases even at that.

    I will check the blog post you are referring to and see if there is anything that may be of benefit. I have figured out how to initiate the deployment from the PC itself with a script, but wasn't quite sure how to have it check and run the command if it was in a list that needed whichever package.

    I may try the trial of Inventory with Heartbeat for now and see how it works out.

    Thanks!

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  • The heartbeat doesn't require a user to be logged in.  All it does is watch for the computer to go from an offline state to an online state.

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  • Okay, sounds good. I thought I read in a forum post at one time that it did. I wasn't really sure why that would of been the case though. Thanks for the info Mike.

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