If you just want to install a tool instead of reading about what it does, click here: ldms_client

Question: How do I know that policies have been applied successfully?

Answer: well, in theory, you could just right-click the scheduled task and view as report. If you need to do several tasks, you could shortcut the console and use the ld_task_machine database table directly, right?

In practice, status information is lost if the core is not available at the time of policy implementation.

1. new policy started on console (status: "available to download")
2. amclient runs on client and get the policy (status: "task has been started")
3. sdclient gets all files into sdmcache (status: "task has been started")
4. network link to the core goes down or becomes congested, gateway goes down, or core goes down
5. sdclient installs the package
6. amclient successfully complete the installation but can't update status on core

Status is never updated in this case. The client has successfully (or not!) done his job but there's no way to realize it from the core.

The problem is more or less the same for a push. The client goes successfully (hopefully) but there's no way to identify as the client will not try to send the status update anymore. To be sure, the only way is to restart the task for all machines, potentially reinstalling something which does not need to be reinstalled (depending on how you've built your packages and methods).

The most accurate way to get APM results is to leverage another bit of unfortunate design... ever try to re-push a required policy to a machine when you're testing a software distribution? Every policy has a GUID, and the GUID can be installed, but cannot be removed. For 8.7 and prior, these GUIDs are kept in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Intel\LANDesk\LDWM\AppHealing\Agent\AMClient\APM\PolicyCache. As of 8.8 and above, they are kept in a SQLite database at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\Database\LDClientDB.db3.

Because you can't predict the GUID name, you won't be able to just add it to LDAPPL3.TEMPLATE for older LANDesk versions, and obviously it's game over for the database-driven ones. Instead, you'll need to use a client-side custom data extension to report anything that's in that key by its name. That's where ldms_client comes in; deploy it, and turn on the LANDesk Policy option.