Configuring Playbooks policies

Depending on the Absolute product licenses associated with your account, the Playbooks policy may not be available.

When activating a Playbooks policy for the first time, you need to configure a setting that determines how devices will handle system restarts that are triggered by Playbooks policy updates.

For activated policies, you can update this setting at any time. The policy update will be sent to the policy group's devices after their next connection to the Absolute Monitoring Center.

About the system restart setting

From time to time, Absolute makes changes to the Bootloader and WinPE image to add improvements or fix issues. When these updates are sent to your devices, a system restart is required to apply the changes to each device. Device provisioning and deprovisioning also require system restarts. The system restart setting allows you to customize these restarts.

The setting is preconfigured to allow restarts to occur whenever a Playbooks policy update requires it. If a device user is logged in, a notification is displayed, warning them that the device needs to restart. They can restart immediately, or postpone the restart up to 3 times for 8 hours each time.

If this preconfiguration does not meet your needs, you can:

• Specify a time window during which these restarts can occur

• Change how device users can delay the system restart, or remove the delay entirely

System requirements

The system restart setting applies to devices running Secure Endpoint Agent 11.0.0.1 or higher.

For policy groups assigned a lower agent version, devices will automatically restart whenever a Playbooks policy update requires it. If a device user is logged in, a notification is displayed, warning them that the device needs to restart. They can restart immediately, or postpone the restart up to 3 times for 8 hours each time. Note that this configuration can't be changed until the policy group is upgraded to a supported agent version.

Steps

To configure the Playbooks policy:

1. Log in to the Secure Endpoint Console as a user with the Manage permission for Policies.
2. On the navigation bar, click Policies > Policy Groups.
3. On the Policy Groups sidebar, click the policy group that you want to update. The policy group opens in the work area.

4. Next to the Playbooks policy's activation slider, click Configure to open the Playbook configuration dialog.

   If the policy group is assigned agent version 10.0.0.2 or lower, the Playbooks policy is not supported and the Configure button is grayed out.

5. Do the following under System restart:

• To allow devices to automatically restart when a Playbooks policy update requires a system restart:

  1. Leave the radio button next to Restart device automatically after updates selected.

  2. Do one of the following:

     • To specify a custom time window, select the checkbox next to Restrict restarts to a time window and specify a time period using the Start and End fields. Note that after selecting a time in the time selector, ensure that you select AM or PM and click OK to apply your changes.

       Selecting Now in the time selector populates the Start (or End) field with the 30-minute increment closest to the current time. For example, if the current time is 4:41 p.m., the Start (or End) time will be set to 4:30 PM.

     • To allow devices to automatically restart whenever a Playbooks policy update requires it, leave the checkbox next to Restrict restarts to a time window unselected.

  3. Do one of the following:

     • To allow device users to postpone the restarts, leave the checkbox next to Allow user to delay restart selected and do the following:

       1. To update the number of times the device user is presented with the restart warning dialog, which allows them to postpone the restart, click the Delay attempts field and select a value. The default is 3, but values from 1 to 3 are supported.
       2. To update the number of hours until the device user is presented with the restart warning dialog again, click the Delay interval field and select a value. The default is 8 hours, but values from 1 to 24 hours are supported.
     • To disallow users to postpone the restarts, clear the checkbox next to Allow user to delay restart.

• To disallow all automatic system restarts that are triggered by a Playbooks policy update, select the radio button next to Disable automatic restarts. The policy update will be applied when a device user or another application restarts the device.

6. Click Save and activate, or click Save if the policy is already activated.