Habitat runs an automation service in the background of Automate that regularly checks for clients to be enable or disabled, new applications to be reported from the agents of the client enabled and any retired agents that no longer need to have data kept on them removed. The tool reviews the installed software list maintained by Automate for each enabled agent and if it has an associated update package set for it Habitat will add that software to management. Habitat regularly goes and checks the repository versions to see what the latest available versions are. It then looks at the installed versions shown by agent and if the are not the same version then Habitat starts the upgrade process on that software. The results can be seen in the Client consoles of each client in Automate.
Console to manage software package associations.
Use this console to create "Searches" for software titles to associate with repository packages available from Chocolatey.org We have provided a handful of commonly used software that you can enable or disable by selecting to "Update" a given search item. When matching new software titles you can use the (%) symbol as a wildcard to help define different software titles and repository packages.
When selecting a search from the list you will automatically populate the (Apps Effected/Agents Effected) list with any agent or software title that may be effected by search. By clicking "Apps Effected" or clicking "Agents Effected" counters you can switch the view between agents and software views. This allows you to pre test your search and if needed refine your search to produce the list of software to be effected by updates.
Scan Speed sets how often the automation runs to update internal scans or push any available updates during each day.
Delay setting is used to place a (X) minute delay between each agents scheduled updates. This is used to help spread out the script schedule across a client so all agents are not trying to update at once and thus causing Chocolatey repo lockouts.
Client console to manage agents.
You will start here to enable and disable the automation in this tool. Each client can have either Desktops/Laptops or Servers updated or both by selecting the appropriate checkboxes. Once enabled the list of Enabled Agents will populate. Selecting the "Rescan Agents" button will force a scan of each agent and any searches that fins software will be applied to agent. Applications found by the scans will appear in the Managed Applications list for any agent that has scanned and search matches were made. You can right click and enabled agent and force an update of software to execute immediately.
There are 4 places inside the plugin where you can disable the auto updates.
- Disable the App Search for items in main view
- Disable the entire location via EDF at location level
- Disable an agent from all updates
- Disable a single Application for an agent.
The Snail Scheduler works in conjunction with the Turtle and Rabbit. The Turtle and Rabbit settings controls the number of times per day the automation runs and the snail settings sets clients individual settings This allows you to control how often automation runs on your agents at a per week or per month level. By default snail mode is disabled and only Rabbit or Turtle will effect scheduling.
An agent getting scanned and Google Chrome found...
During the scans an agent logs any applications it finds that searches have matched up. Once in the Managed Packages list Habitat will start updating the software.
Automation logs
You can find the automation logs for this tool on the Automate host at C:\Program Files\LabTech\Logs or by using the Habitat Sever plugin log reader tool . (see image)