Configuration Manager Client Status

This article describes Configuration Manager’s client status information and the scenarios that cause a client’s status to change.

When the Configuration Manager client, typically installed on the device during a step in the Operating System Deployment task sequence, is healthy, the device is online, connected to its assigned management point and sending a message to the management point every five minutes. The device is active, having done all of the following in seven days:

• Requested machine policy (runs every 30 minutes)
• Sent a heartbeat data discovery record (sent once a week)
• Sent hardware inventory (sent once a week)

The client status states to be aware of are online/offline, active/inactive, and client yes/no. These states can be viewed in Configuration Manager Console under Assets and Compliance -> Devices. The relevant columns to have enabled are: Icon, Client Activity, and Client.

The icons in the Icon column and their meaning are:

Scenarios

Online to offline

Device is on, connected to a network/internet and connected to its assigned management point, sending messages to the MP every 5 minutes and showing online in Console. The device is disconnected from the network. The device will show as offline in Console shortly after the MP has not received a message from the device for 5 minutes.

Active to inactive

An active device that has not made a policy request, has not sent a heartbeat DDR, and has not sent hardware inventory in more than 7 days will be flagged as inactive.

If the device is inactive for 14 days or more, the Delete Inactive Client Discovery Data site maintenance task will delete all the discovery data for the device from the database.

Client equals No

If an inactive device does not send a heartbeat DDR in 21 days or more, the Clear Install Flag site maintenance task, setting the device’s ClientState to 0 in the database.

FAQ

Will aged devices get automatically deleted?

No. Several Configuration Manager site maintenance tasks will delete most of the information about a device from the database but no maintenance task will delete the device.

Why are devices I deleted being recreated?

If the device has a computer object in Active Directory, Configuration Manager’s system and group discovery methods will continue to discover the object and create a new device. To ensure a device deleted from Configuration Manger is not recreated, the computer object must be deleted from Active Directory.