Let’s understand the ConfigMgr Client Action called Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle in a bit more detail. The users/admins can initiate the Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle to speed up the inventory as part of troubleshooting scenarios from Windows 10 clients. In this post, I will cover the details of this action on the client side.
I have explained about Hardware Inventory Collection Cycle in the previous post. But, it’s also important to understand ConfigMgr Client Component Status details for troubleshooting. There are three different status details are available for each component of the client. Those are installed, disabled, and enabled.
I have seen many admins getting confused between ConfigMgr Client App and SCCM Software Center. Both are different and client actions are available with ConfigMgr Client App (a.k.a Configuration Manager Application) available in the control panel.
Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle
There are 8 (eight) client actions available in Configuration Manager client application properties as of the ConfigMgr 2010 version. The Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle Cycle client action is the Forth (4th) one from the top.
Navigate to:
- You can launch the client app from any computer that has an SCCM client installed.
- Open Command Prompt
- Run the following command – Control smscfgrc
- Click on the Actions tab
- Select Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle
- Click on OK from the Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle popup window
Background Processes
This SCCM client action Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle “immediately” triggers the re-evaluation of the machine policy process from the Windows 10 client.
Let’s understand the machine policy retrieval & evaluation process via log files. When you initiate this action from the ConfigMgr client app, you can see the Policy Agent agent is triggered. It checks with MP to retrieve the latest policy for the device. The default machine policy interval can be configured on Client settings.
NOTE! – I have mentioned that the Discovery Data Collection action didn’t reinstate the client record that I deleted from the admin console. However, I have noticed that the SCCM client action Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle helped to get the client device record back into the SCCM console.
- smscliui.log
- Perform Action: Request & Evaluate Machine Policy – {8EF4D77C-8A23-45c8-BEC3-630827704F51}. Message sent, id={640775EF-9CB0-4EED-B4FB-B1C741F4C69B}
- PolicyAgent.log
- Requesting Machine policy assignments from authority ‘SMS:MEM’
- Raising event:instance of CCM_PolicyAgent_AssignmentsRequested
- Processing Machine assignments from ‘SMS: MEM’. The new cookie is ‘2021-01-29 05:24:52.830’.
- Compiling policy assignment ‘{c210d8f2-9cfb-4fa5-bf3e-aa1db068ea1b}’ (ver. 1.00) from ‘SMS:MEM’ (2021-01-29 05:24:52.830)
- Policy Windows/All_x64_Windows_8_and_higher_Client/VI/VS/U version 1.00 hash SHA256:509D5 already exists on client
- [PolicyUpdate] Updated namespace ‘\.\ROOT\ccm\policy\S_1_5_21_2901188661_3025291148_348095268_1105\RequestedConfig’ successfully
- Raising event:instance of CCM_PolicyAgent_SettingsEvaluationComplete
- [Assignment Request] No new assignments for Machine Prod-Win20
Logs
The following are the log files that recorded a few entries when I triggered the Machine Policy Request & Evaluation Cycle. More details about SCCM clients logs are available here.
- smscliui.log
- PolicyAgent.log
Resources
- ConfigMgr Client Action Discovery Data Collection Cycle | SCCM
- Discovery Data Collection action
- Hardware Inventory Collection Cycle
- ConfigMgr Client App Vs SCCM Software Center
Author
Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…