Stopping a reclaim policy
SAM users (AppClarity Administrator, Reclaim Administrator) who have defined reclaim policies may want to stop those policies from being applied. There are many reasons why this may be required, but here are some reasons:
A published policy needs to be temporarily stopped.
A published policy needs revision.
The policy is no longer needed or the policy was created accidentally or was used as part of a test.
There's an emergency, policies are not working as expected and need to be stopped to prevent any further consequences.
Disabling a published policy
Temporarily suspending a reclaim policy leaves the policy unchanged in a published state but disabled. You can subsequently re-enable it whenever necessary without requiring any other change to the policy.
To do this:
Navigate to AppClarity→Reclaim→Policies.
Locate the policy you want to disable. In our example, this is a policy for a mandatory uninstall of unused Microsoft Project.
Click on the Edit link at the right-hand end of the policy's row in the table to display the Reclaim Policy page.
Under 'Basic Information' section, uncheck the Enabled checkbox.
Click Publish to save the change.
Notice how the Is Enabled column now displays FALSE.
The Reclaim Consolidation report is refreshed automatically when Publish is clicked, so the reclaimer changes come into effect immediately.
The published policy will still be published but will not be enabled any longer, and hence no reclaim will happen against this policy.
Save a published reclaim policy as a draft
Like disabling a published policy, this also has the effect of temporarily stopping the policy. The downside is that it gets converted into draft reclaim policy, and will need to be published again to make it reclaimable. But if the policy needs any revision, this may be a good option.
To do this:
Navigate to AppClarity→Reclaim→Policies.
Locate the policy you want to disable. In our example this is a policy for a mandatory uninstall of Adobe Acrobat Reader MUI.
Click on the Edit link at the right-hand end of the policy's row in the table to display the Reclaim Policy page (alternatively, from Policies screen only, a policy can be moved to draft, by selecting the policy and click on Move to Draft button at right hand side)
Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Click Save draft.
This has the effect of changing the status of the policy from the Published to Draft.
The Reclaim Consolidation report is refreshed automatically when Save draft is clicked so the reclaimer changes come into effect immediately.
The published policy will no longer be published but will be in the draft state, so that it can be re-published at a later time.
Deleting a published reclaim policy
When you are sure that a published reclaim policy is no longer needed, and will not be needed again in the future, you can delete the policy.
To do this:
Navigate to AppClarity→Reclaim→Policies.
Locate the policy you want to disable. In our example this is a policy for a mandatory uninstall of all versions of Microsoft Office 365.
Check the checkbox at the left-hand end of the policy's row in the table.
Click Delete.
In the confirmation popup, click OK to delete the selected policy permanently. If you have instead changed your mind you can click Cancel.
This has the effect of removing the policy from the Policieslisting page and from AppClarity altogether.
The Reclaim Consolidation report is refreshed automatically when Delete is clicked so the reclaimer changes come into effect immediately.
The published policy will no longer be available in AppClarity.
Perform an emergency stop of all reclaim policies
If you are in an emergency state, and not sure which reclaim policy to target you can disable all the policies in one step.
To do this:
Navigate to Settings→Configuration→Provider Configuration.
Select the check-box for Reclaimer uninstall configuration type, and click Edit
Click on the toggle button, to toggle Off (to disable) the Reclaimer control to stop all devices from downloading their reclaim policies, and then Save.
This will stop any subsequent attempts to download the reclaim policy. This will not prevent any reclaim policies that have already been downloaded from running.
When the emergency has been resolved, you can click on the toggle to turn reclaim policy downloads back on.