Rerun advertisement

[hsshah28]

Can anyone provide me basic understanding on what is Rerun advertisement from App Portal stand point, what it do and how? Does AppPortal service account require admin access on local workstation?

[jdempsey]

Can you provide a bit more context to your question?  Are you asking what the program rerun behavior setting on the SCCM advertisement does?  Are you asking what happens if someone clicks the "Reinstall" button next to a request on the My Requests page?

To directly address your last question, App Portal does not directly interact with managed devices when deploying software.  App Portal only communicates with registered/configured deployment systems such as SCCM, Altiris/Symantec Client Management, AirWatch, MobileIron, and Jamf/Casper Suite to perform deployment operations.  It is those deployment systems that directly communicate with their managed devices to deploy software.

[CharlesW]

Actually, App Portal will still try to connect to the client directly via a WMI call, in the case of a rerun.. I believe that this is the only time that App Portal will attempt to do so (with the exception of the legacy policy refresh).. It makes this WMI call in order to delete the following registry key:

HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\SMS\\Mobile Client\\Software Distribution\\Execution History\\System\\<collectionID>

I "believe" that this registry key is how the SCCM client knows if a package has been installed, so it plays a part in the rerun behavior.. I "think" that deleting this key would be equivalent to flagging the SCCM package deployment as "always rerun". 

[jdempsey]

Wow!  Who knew?  Charlie, are you sure that's still active/reachable code?  If so, under what circumstances?  Given that this has potential communication and security implications, is this in the product documentation somewhere?  The implication is that you would have to have the appropriate ports open (both on network and personal firewalls), as well as making sure the App Portal service account has the necessary permissions on each managed client, in order to make such a call.  I would not expect those requirements to be met in most environments.

[CharlesW]

Yes, it is still active code.. There is a timer which runs and looks for rerun requests. (rerun=1 in wd_packageRequests).... I'm not that familiar with the rerun code, so I can not tell you under what circumstances this flag gets set.. I'm fairly certain that it gets set when you reinstall/rerun a package from under the my requests page.. I believe that it is also tied to the "Enable Rerun Advertisement for Status ID's" setting under deployment->ConfigMgr.

[hsshah28]

Thanks charles and Jdempsey. do we have any supporting documentation on this?
So, rerun advertisement will identify software is installed or not by looking into registry?

[CharlesW]

Hardik,
No there is definitely no documentation on this subject. This registry key is used by the SCCM client to determine if the software is installed or not.. While App Portal will attempt to delete the registry key, it does not actually use the registry key in its own processing..

[hsshah28]

So, if WMI calls are restricted due to network and security issue, those registry key will not be deleted and SCCM will not reinstall the application? is that correct understanding?

[CharlesW]

I think that when App Portal deletes the registry key, it is able to bypass the "native" rerun behavior imposed by SCCM.. If App Portal is not able to delete the registry key, then it should boil down to the rerun behavior defined for the deployment in SCCM (always rerun, never rerun, rerun if failed, etc..).