Creating a delivery method [Web console]

You can create and edit delivery methods in the Web console. The Delivery methods tab displays all publicly available delivery methods and any delivery methods that you've created.

Delivery method groups

Delivery methods are saved in the following groups:

  • My delivery methods: Delivery methods that the current user has created. The administrative users can also see these delivery methods.
  • Public delivery methods: Delivery methods that have an owner type of Public or Public user. Anyone who schedules a delivery method from this group will become the owner of that task. The task remains in the Common tasks group and will also be visible in the User tasks group for that user.
  • All delivery methods: Both the current user's delivery methods and delivery methods marked public.
  • User delivery methods: (administrative users only) List of all delivery methods sorted by owner/creator (not including public delivery methods).

Within each group, delivery methods are organized by type (Policy-supported, Push, Policy, and Multicast).

For more information on how delivery methods are used in software distribution, see "Software distribution overview."

To create a new delivery method
  1. In the Web console toolbox, click Distribution > Distribution.
  2. In the action pane, click the Delivery methods tab, select a delivery method type from one of the groups, and click New on the toolbar.
  3. Type a name for the method in the Name text box.
  4. Add information on all of the pages of the dialog box, as described below.
  5. When you have finished, click Save.

About the Description page

  • Owner: Set an individual owner or select Public or Public user to allow other users to share methods.
  • Description: The description you enter here appears in the Distribution packages and Delivery methods trees and dialogs. Make the name descriptive but not too long, since you'll have to scroll to see longer names.
  • Number of devices for simultaneous distribution: Specify the maximum number of devices to which a distribution task can be applied. This can help to limit network traffic as the task is being distributed

About the Network usage pages

Use these pages to manage network usage while tasks are being distributed.

  • Network usage page: Select file transfer and download options, including preferred server, peer download, and Targeted Multicast™.
  • Bandwidth page: Specify bandwidth limits and select network connection options.
  • Bandwidth usage page: Specify maximum percentages of bandwidth to be used in WAN and local distribution settings.
  • Multicast domain page: Select options for how to implement multicast distributions.
  • Multicast limits page: Set limits related to multicast delivery and file caching.

About the Reboot page

Use this page to configure whether the computer is rebooted after the software has been installed or removed. These options are supported on Windows devices but are not supported on Linux.

  • Reboot only if needed: Devices will reboot it the package requires it.
  • Never reboot: Devices won't reboot after a package installation. If you select this setting and your package requires a reboot, devices may encounter errors running the application until they do reboot. If the package is an SWD package, this option overrules any settings in the package. If the package is a generic executable or an MSI package, the package setting may overrule this option.
  • Always reboot: Devices will reboot regardless of whether the package requires it or not.

About the Feedback and timing pages

Use these pages to determine how users are notified about distribution tasks, and how they can delay or cancel tasks.

  • Feedback and timing: Select whether to hide or display feedback from the user, and whether to allow the user to delay running the package or cancel it.
  • More deferral options: Set limits on how many times the user can delay a package and whether to wait for user response or start packages immediately. You must have selected Display progress to user on the Feedback and timing page for these options to be available.
  • Custom message: Select to use either an HTML page or a text-based message box when the user if notified of a package distribution.

About the Type and frequency of policy page

Only available for policy distributions. Select whether the policy is required, recommended, or optional, and select how often the policy is applied (one time, as desired, or on a regular interval).

About the Downgrade page

Use this page to specify whether a distribution package should have its functionality downgraded to the level of the OS and agent on a target device, or whether the package should fail if the OS or agent can't handle the default functionality of the page.

About the Discovery page

This page allows you to choose options for device discovery. Before the scheduled task handler can process a job, it needs to discover each device's current IP address. This page lets you configure how the service contacts devices

  • UDP: Selecting UDP uses a Ping Discovery Service (PDS) ping via UDP. Most device components depend on PDS, so your managed devices should have PDS on them. PDS is part of the standard management agent. This is the fastest discovery method and the default. With UDP, you can also select the UDP ping retries and timeout. UDP discovery is not supported by Linux.
  • TCP: Selecting TCP uses an HTTP connection to the device on port 9595. This discovery method has the benefit of being able to work through a firewall if you open port 9595, but it's subject to HTTP connection timeouts if devices aren't there. These timeouts can take 20 seconds or more. If a lot of target devices don't respond to the TCP connection, your job will take a while before it can start.
  • Both: Selecting Both has the service attempt discovery with UDP first, then TCP, and lastly DNS/WINS if it's enabled.
  • Number of retries: The number of attempts discovery makes to contact devices.
  • Discovery timeout: The number of milliseconds before discovery retries will timeout.
  • Timeout for subnet broadcasts: The number of milliseconds before subnet broadcast retries will timeout.
  • Disable subnet broadcast: When selected, disables discovery via a subnet broadcast. When selected, this will result in a subnet directed broadcast being sent via UDP using PDS.
  • Disable DNS/WINS lookup: When selected, disables a name service lookup for each device if the selected TCP/UDP discovery method fails.