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Software Distribution
Use the BigFix Software Distribution applications to deploy software to endpoints across your network from a single location. Maintain control and visibility into software delivery and installation. Device owners can use the Self Service Application to manage software and other BigFix actions that are deployed to them as offers.
Software Distribution User's Guide
BigFix Software Distribution is a part of the Lifecycle Management suite, provides a consolidated, comprehensive solution to quickly deploy software throughout a network from a single, centralized location. This solution delivers cost-effective operational control and visibility to your software delivery and installation process.
Managing packages
You can bundle software distribution content into packages for faster deployment.
Package type verification
Check the state of your endpoints where you deployed the distributed task to verify whether the software was installed successfully.

Software Distribution
Use the BigFix Software Distribution applications to deploy software to endpoints across your network from a single location. Maintain control and visibility into software delivery and installation. Device owners can use the Self Service Application to manage software and other BigFix actions that are deployed to them as offers.
- Self Service Application
- Software Distribution User's Guide
  BigFix Software Distribution is a part of the Lifecycle Management suite, provides a consolidated, comprehensive solution to quickly deploy software throughout a network from a single, centralized location. This solution delivers cost-effective operational control and visibility to your software delivery and installation process.
  - Overview
    The Software Distribution application is part of the BigFix Software Distribution Systems Lifecycle Management suite. This application enables organizations to improve management of their desktop software distribution processes from a single, unified point of control, and storage-optimized library.
  - Best practices
    Learn how to best optimize your use of BigFix Software Distribution.
  - Dashboards overview
    BigFix Software Distribution provides several dashboards for managing software distribution tasks in your deployment.
  - Managing packages
    You can bundle software distribution content into packages for faster deployment.
    - Unicode support
      Full support of Unicode computing standard enables consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems and setting of local pages.
    - SHA-256 task conversion
      BigFix version 9.1 provides the capability to follow the NIST security standards by configuring an enhanced security option. This setting enables SHA-256 as the hashing algorithm for digital signatures and content verification.
    - Creating a package or Fixlet
      You must create a package before you can add files that are needed to install a specific software product.
    - Adding tags to packages
      To easily query Fixlets for each package, add a tag to the package from the Manage Software Distribution package dashboard.
    - Editing a package or Fixlet
      After creating a package, add the necessary files to install the software product that you want to deploy to your endpoints and then create the distribution tasks.
    - Package type verification
      Check the state of your endpoints where you deployed the distributed task to verify whether the software was installed successfully.
    - Adding preinstallation and postinstallation commands
      You can include extra custom commands before or after the installation command, which is used to install the selected software package on endpoints. All commands are run from the root folder of the software package.
    - Import and export packages
      You can easily move packages that are created through the Software Distribution dashboard from one deployment to another. This feature is available from BigFix version 9.1 or later.
    - Generating logs for individual tasks
      Configure a distribution task to generate an individual log file upon its completion. You can enable the individual task logging feature to generate log entries for new and existing tasks. You can also upload the logs to the server for parsing purposes.
    - Software repositories migration
      The Software Distribution Upload Manager is a stand-alone tool that helps you to upload any packages that already exist in your deployment before installing Software Distribution.
  - Managing Application Management Groups
    Group software distribution tasks and client computers for faster deployment, especially in large networks.
  - Frequently asked questions
    This section is designed to help you better understand BigFix Software Distribution through questions and answers.

Package type verification

Check the state of your endpoints where you deployed the distributed task to verify whether the software was installed successfully.

Ensure that the software installation for each package type is successful by checking the state of the endpoint before and after deploying the task.

Table 1. How to verify the installation of different package types
Package Type	System state of the endpoint before the installation	System state of the endpoint after the installation
MSI	The task must be relevant, which means that the software that you want to install has not been installed yet.	The task must no longer be relevant to mean that the software installation was successful.
EXE	The software that you want to install must not be listed in the Control Panel > Programs and Features.	The software that you installed must be listed in the Control Panel > Programs and Features.
BAT	The folder for the software that you want to install must not be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\BigFix Enterprise\BES Client\__BESTData\actionsite\__Download.	A new folder for the installed software must be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\BigFix Enterprise\BES Client\__BESTData\actionsite\__Download.
PKG	The package must not be listed when you run the command pkgutil --pkgs.	Run the command pkgutil --pkgs. The package must be listed to mean that the software installation was successful.