Implementation details

SMP Console shows a notification in the main header area when NS determines that the product list file, used by Symantec Installation Manager (SIM), was updated. Usually, it is a GA Product Listing (PL) file on www.solutionsam.com (the central location where customers download Altiris information from). If there are several PL files registered in SIM all these files are checked, not only the active one.

SMP Server does that check by standard Daily schedule (by default at 2:10 AM each day). To do that it runs SIM with a command line in silent mode. SIM only determines whether the PL file modification date was changed, it does not download PL files and does not determine whether the files were really modified.

Note:
SMP Console notification is triggered when it detects that a new PL version is available. Not when there are updates for currently installed products. It is just a notification about PL refresh availability.
In common cases, we release a new PL when we have updates for products, so you will see them in SIM also. But if PL was released to fix some problems in SIM itself or some particular products, for example, you will get a notification in the SMP Console, but when SIM gets launched it will show nothing after PL gets refreshed.

SMP Console queries the SMP server for the results of that check every five minutes asynchronously and if PL file modifications were detected shows the bell icon in the header area.

Users can click on that bell icon and see what happened. In the case of product updates, the user will see the corresponding message:
"Product updates available in SIM"

Then notification can be postponed for a day, week, or month. Postponing works per account, so if a user logged on with one account postpones the update, then the user who logs on to the console with another account will still see the notification.

Update notification is not actionable. To see which products were exactly updated and/or start a product update user has to run SIM which will download updated product list files and display all the information.

Update notifications can be configured to be visible only to certain users of the console. The View Update Notifications privilege lets you configure if the update notification icon is displayed in the Symantec Management Console. Note that you cannot disable this privilege for the default Symantec Administrators role.