To keep track of the status of clients, the managing server executes as necessary jobs that collect client information. The following is a description of the types of jobs that are executed to collect information from clients, and the action that each client takes in response to such a job.

Get system information from client job

Upon receipt of this job, the client automatically reports hardware-related information (the type of OS being used and the amount of available hard disk space) to the higher system.

Get software information from client job

Upon receipt of this job, the client searches for all the software programs that are installed on its system and reports the resulting information to the higher system.

This software-search process is executed automatically. During this processing, on the client's screen you can display a message dialog box that indicates that processing has started. When the client receives the job, you can use the Hold or Cancel Software Distribution Job dialog box to specify whether the job is to be executed immediately.

Get user inventory information job

When this job executes, the client screen displays dialog boxes containing input fields that were set up by the managing server. The client user enters information (user inventory information) into these fields. A dialog box for entering information is displayed automatically at set intervals specified during setup. The client user can specify display of this dialog box in order to modify entered values. For details about how to enter user inventory information, see 11.5 Entering user inventory information in the manual Administrator's Guide Volume 1.