Application Resilience policies for Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs
You can activate an Application Resilience policy for Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs (Dell SupportAssist) to collect information about the functional status of Dell SupportAssist installed on your Windows devices and view the results in reports. You can also configure the policy to attempt to repair or reinstall the application.
System requirements
Application Resilience policies for Dell SupportAssist are supported on devices running:
- a supported version of the Windows operating system
-
PowerShell version 5.1 or higher
Due to PowerShell restrictions imposed by Microsoft, Application Resilience isn't supported for this application on devices running Windows 11 SE.
-
one of the following versions of Dell SupportAssist:
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3.3.x or higher
Significant software changes in higher versions may cause health checks to become invalid.
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Health checks
In addition to checking the version, the following table describes the health checks performed:
If you select Report higher versions as Compliant, higher versions report Compliant without running health checks.
| Component | Test performed | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Services | Installed | Running | Signed by |
|
P | P |
One of the signers entered in the policy configuration By default, Signers contains "Dell Inc". |
| Application name | |||
|
The application uses the following name:
|
|||
Repairing and reinstalling
You can configure an Application Resilience policy for Dell SupportAssist to enable the Application Resilience (RAR) component A lightweight software component of the Secure Endpoint Agent that detects the status of third party applications installed on a device. The component may also attempt to repair the third party application if it is non-compliant. The RAR component is deployed on a device only when the device is associated with a customized policy group and that policy group's Application Resilience policy is activated. to repair Dell SupportAssist if it's not functioning, or reinstall it if it's missing or can't be repaired.
Depending on the Absolute product licenses associated with your account, the Report and repair and Report, repair, and reinstall options may not be available.
The RAR component of the Secure Endpoint Agent can respond to the following issues:
| Issue | Resolution |
|---|---|
| Repair | |
|
One or more of the following services aren't running:
|
The RAR component restarts each stopped service. |
|
One or more of the following services aren't installed and the service's executable can be detected on the device:
|
The RAR component reinstalls each missing service. |
| Reinstall | |
|
Downgrades are not supported. If the version installed on a device is higher than the expected version, no action is taken. |
|
|
One or more of the following services aren't installed and the service's executable cannot be detected on the device:
|
If the application is installed, the RAR component uninstalls it. After the application is uninstalled, or if the application wasn't installed, the RAR component downloads and installs the configured version of the application. |
| Dell SupportAssist failed to be repaired, or the expected version isn't installed | |
Preparing the installer
If you want the Secure Endpoint Agent to reinstall Dell SupportAssist if it is not functioning or missing, you need to make the following files available for download:
- SupportAssistx64.msi
- SupportAssistConfig.mst
To prepare the installer:
- Follow the instructions provided by Dell to configure and download the Dell SupportAssist installer.
- Follow the instructions provided by Dell to extract the contents of the deployment package (.exe file).
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Select the SupportAssistx64.msi and SupportAssistConfig.mst files and add them to a new ZIP file.
The ZIP file can have any name.
Do not include any parents folders or subfolders in the ZIP file. Do not change the names of the SupportAssistx64.msi and SupportAssistConfig.mst files.
The ZIP file can now be uploaded to the Secure Endpoint Console or hosted on your own server.
Pre-caching installers
The RAR component looks for the following files names when checking pre-cached installers:
| Component | File name |
|---|---|
| Installers |
SupportAssist.zip containing:
|
Configuring Application Resilience policies
Before you activate an Application Resilience policy, you need to configure the policy. You need to configure the application version in addition to the settings in Configuring Application Resilience policies.
To configure the application version:
Under Dell SupportAssist version, enter the version of Dell SupportAssist you expect to be running on your devices.
- The target version must be a sequence of digits separated by a period.
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You can use wildcard "*" characters after the major version number, for example, 3.*, 3.3.* or 3.3.1.*.
Make sure the version you are entering is consistent with version 3.3.x or higher.
If you selected the Report, repair, and reinstall option, you also need to configure these settings in addition to the settings in Configuring Application Resilience policies.
To configure the Dell SupportAssist specific settings:
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[Optional] To only reinstall the application if it's missing, select the checkbox next to Do not reinstall or upgrade if the app is already installed. When this option is selected, the application is not reinstalled when either of the following conditions apply:
- The application version is lower than the expected version.
- The application can't be repaired.
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[Optional] Under Additional installation commands, enter the applicable installation command-line parameters to configure any settings not covered by the policy configuration. For more information on available parameters, see Dell's documentation.
