Automating with Action1 Policies

A policy is any one-time or recurring management activity such as running a script, deploying an app, or restarting a computer. Action1 enables you to run policy-based management actions right from the Endpoints dashboard. On top of that, Action1 provides a centralized location for organizing all your scheduled and preset policies. Navigate to Policies to see a list of pending actions and the as well as the execution history. 

 As an administrator, you can leverage policies with one-time actions while planning the maintenance works and create recurrent policies to run automatically. With policies, you can assess compliance with certain rules and automate response steps if necessary, for example ensure an antivirus app is installed on all computers and force deployment to those that miss it. Policies enable you to check your IT infrastructure state, see compliant endpoints and automatically help others to keep up with them.

Most commonly, Action1 policies are used for patch management and continuous update delivery since they enable you to automate deployment routines, set a timetable, and leave it operating on auto-pilot. Yet, you can leverage policies for running one-time actions whenever necessary.

Ideas for Creating Policies

• Automatic patch management—create a policy to check that your endpoints have the latest KBs and hotfixes installed and eventually deploy missing updates.
• Office tools—create a policy that verifies all the necessary tools are installed on your employees’ workstations.
• Malicious apps management—create a policy that ensures no malicious software is installed. It scans your system for suspicious apps and uninstalls them if necessary.
• Desktop management—create a policy that ensures all workstations have the same desktop settings. It will run an update script on workstations that don’t meet specified conditions.
• Administration—create a policy that checks vital metrics for system (e.g., the number of failed login attempts, days since last computer reboot or password change) and force actions on endpoints that don’t match your desired result.

Available Actions for Policies

• Reboot (see Restart Endpoints Remotely for detailed instructions)
• Run Script (see Run Scripts Remotely for detailed instructions)
• Deploy App (see Deploy Software with App Store for detailed instructions)
• Deploy Update (see Roll Out and Deploy Updates for detailed instructions)
• Uninstall App (see Review and Manage Installed Apps for detailed instructions)

Adding a New Policy

1. Navigate to Policies. Alternatively, pick the workstations and select an action on the Endpoints page.
2. Select + New Policy and specify an action.
3. Provide details about the action to be executed:
   • Reboot (see Restart Endpoints Remotely for detailed instructions)
   • Run Script. Provide the script (CMD or PowerShell). Optionally, if want to verify the endpoint state before executing the main script, you can provide the condition script (CMD or PowerShell) and specify the meet exit codes. Action1 will run this script first and if the condition script exits with something diffirent than the meet exit code, than Action1 will run the main script. The main script is meant to bring the endpoint into policy compliance. For example, check the number of days since the last endpoint shutdown and force shutdown is the number of days is more than 90. Feel free to select one of the scripts from the Script Library or save a new script to reuse it later. (see Run Scripts Remotely for detailed instructions)
   • Deploy App (see Deploy Software with App Store for detailed instructions)
   • Deploy Update (see Roll Out and Deploy Updates for detailed instructions)
   • Uninstall App (see Review and Manage Installed Apps for detailed instructions)

2. On the Select Endpoints step, select Add Endpoints. Action1 enables you to add endpoints individually, or you can specify an entire endpoint group.

3. On the Frequency step, provide a policy name and define how often you want to check your endpoints and apply the policy. You have the following options:

• One-time action: run the policy once – now or at a specified time.
• Scheduled: verify the policy compliance every X hours, every day, every week, or every month.
• Not scheduled: keep a preconfigured policy in the Policies and run it as needed later.

Set the missing schedule time frame setting so that the powered-off endpoints can catch up with a policy. Make sure the time frame doesn’t exceed the frequency of the policy execution, i.e., don’t set it to 3 days for policies running on a daily basis. Once ready, click Finish.

New policy will be added to the list on Policies page. On the Policies page, for each policy you’ll see the status (Scheduled or Not Scheduled), the last run timestamp, the next scheduled run, the current schedule, and history details. You can also force the policy to run now from this page. When running a policy outside its preset schedule, you can also. update its scope, i.e., overwrite the list of endpoints to apply this policy to.

Review Execution Details

If you are interested in execution details or need to troubleshoot a failed action, check out the Policies / History page.