Differences between Fixlets and tasks

If you look at the details in the Fixlet and task definition on the BigFix console, you see the same entries. What makes the difference between the two are the scope and the default behavior.

For what concerns the scope:
  • Fixlets are used for fixing lack of compliance to enforced rules, in a few words, a Fixlet takes a known "broken" condition and fixes it.
  • Tasks are configuration items to run, in other words, a task takes a "not-necessarily broken condition" and changes it to something else that is "not-necessarily fixed".
For example:
  • A Fixlet would be Update AntiVirus definition.
  • A task would be Run Antivirus scan.
For what concerns the default behaviour:
  • When a Fixlet finishes it's action script, it checks the relevance to make sure it has gone from true, the Fixlet is relevant, to false, whatever was broken is now fixed, and reports back Fixed when it is done.
  • When a task finishes its action script, it does not check the relevance again. If all the lines in the action script completed then the client considers that action successful and reports back Complete. For this reason, as a best practice, you are suggested to set success criteria for the action run by the task to ensure that the task run and that it was successful.