Performing Actions on Machines

Enables you to initiate a patch scan of the selected machines using any of the available patch scan templates.

Enables you to deploy (install) all patches currently missing on the selected machine. See Deploying All Missing Patches to a Machine for more information.

If you deploy a patch to a specific SQL Server instance, the patch is applied to all instances on that machine.

Enables you to perform a test deployment to the selected machines. This is especially useful for patch deployments you want to schedule for a later time. Testing the deployment allows you to correct any potential problems in a deployment and make it less likely that a deployment will fail. See the Operations Monitor for more information.

Enables you to make a Remote Desktop connection to the selected machine. See How to Initiate a Remote Desktop Connection for more details.

Enables you to perform a power status scan on the selected machines.

Enables you to modify the power state of the selected machines. You can immediately restart, shut down, or awaken the machines, or you can use a power state template to schedule a reboot of the machines and leave them in a particular state (fully powered on, in sleep mode, in hibernate mode, or powered off). See How to Initiate Power Management Tasks for more information.

Enables you to either open a Windows PowerShell™ prompt or select and execute an approved script. See How to Execute a Script for details.

Enables you to add the selected machines to a new machine group or to an existing machine group. See Creating A New Machine Group for more information.

IMPORTANT! Machines you add to the machine group are automatically assigned the associated machine credentials. If no machine credentials are available, no credentials will be assigned and the default credentials will be used in any subsequent scans. If the default credentials are not valid for the machines, and if the account credentials of the person currently logged on to the program are also not valid for the machines, scans of the machines you just added to the group will fail. To prevent scanning errors, always supply credentials for machines you add to a machine group. See Supplying Credentials for more information.

Enables you to view and edit machine properties. See Managing Individual Machine Properties for more information.

Enables you to view the Scheduled Remote Tasks Manager, which gives you a single location from which to monitor the power tasks and patch deployment tasks currently scheduled on this machine.

Enables you to:

• Install an agent, assign a different policy to the agent, or uninstall an agent.
• Send a number of different commands to the selected agents. The commands apply only to machines that already have agents installed, that are online, and that are configured to be listening agents. See the Send command description for detailed information about the available commands.
• (Machine View only) Initiate any of the tasks currently defined within the selected agents. When you select a task a confirmation dialog is displayed. If you choose to continue, the task is immediately started on the agent machines. See Creating a New Agent Policy for information on the types of tasks that may be available.

Export information about the selected machines to a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file. The CSV file can then be used within a spreadsheet program.

This option is only available if you have enabled the email feature and defined an SMTP server. It enables you to set or change the automated report settings for this machine. Changes you make here will override email settings you specified on the Manage Machine Properties dialog.