How to Sync SCCM Policy from Software Center

In this tutorial, I will show you how to sync SCCM policy from Software Center. When you manually sync policy from the software center, the computer initiates the configuration manager user and machine policy retrieval & evaluation cycle.

When you install the Configuration Manager client on a Windows computer, it comes preinstalled with a set of client actions. Every client action has a specific purpose, such as running a scan, checking for updates and policies, and ensuring that the device is up-to-date with the most recent policies from the Management Point server. Read the guide on Configuration Manager client actions available in SCCM to understand more about their uses.

Any user can open the Configuration Manager control panel and run the individual client actions when required. However, not many users are aware that there is another way to sync the SCCM policies, and that is from the Software Center.

Sync Policy from Software Center in SCCM

To begin with, launch the Software Center on the client computer. You may run the software center by running the shortcut command softwarecenter:

Once the Software Center is loaded, click on the Options. On this page, you’ll find multiple configuration settings related to the software center. Expand the Computer Maintenance settings and click on ‘Sync Policy.’

You’ll now notice that Software Center begins syncing policy, as seen in the below screenshot. It takes only a few seconds to initiate the required action cycles.

What happens after you sync policy from Software Center?

When you sync a policy from Software Center, two important client actions are triggered, which are explained below.

1. Machine Policy Retrieval & Evaluation Cycle: Running this action triggers the ad-hoc machine policy retrieval from the client outside its scheduled polling interval (default value is every 60 minutes).
2. User Policy Retrieval & Evaluation Cycle: This action initiates ad-hoc user policy retrieval from the client outside its scheduled polling interval.

Note: The configuration manager user and machine policy retrieval & evaluation cycle can also be triggered from the control panel applet, but doing it from the software center is much easier.

Verify Software center policy sync using Logs

To determine whether the policy sync was successful after being initiated from Software Center, review the PolicyAgent.log on the client computer. This log records requests for policies made by using the Data Transfer Service on the client computer.

From the below screenshot, we see the Policy Agent log shows the device is checking for new policies from the management point server. This happens after the user has synchronized the policy from the Software Center.

Requesting User policy assignments for 'S-1-5-21-1071632028-1363351252-2116187111-1106' from authority 'SMS:MCM'. IsDomainUser = 1,IsCloudUser = 0
PolicyAgent_RequestAssignments
Processing User assignments from 'SMS:MCM'. The new cookie is ''.
Received User delta policy update with 0 assignments
User 'S-1-5-21-1071632028-1363351252-2116187111-1106' is a member of 7 Domain Security Groups.