I ran into an issue with a distribution task that had me a bit stumped.
The task was a simple vbscript to perform some custom developed application upgrades. I created a custom vulnerability definition that scanned for a specific file and version on the client computers. I then used the "create query for affected computers" option to establish the target for the software package and set the scheduled time for the task to kick off at a predetermined time.
All the required steps went according to plan except when the task launched at the specified time, every single client reported "the client has initiated an asynchronous policy execution". Then sat there and did nothing. After waiting nearly 45 minutes for the task to execute, I removed all the targets, then manually dropped them back in from the console and relaunched the task. They immediately started downloading and installing the software package and upgraded normally.
So my question is, why did this task do this and how do I prevent it in the future? Many of our software repairs for custom software require us to roll patches within a specified time window and I can't afford to babysit a task every time we need to update it.