SCCM Task Sequence stuck after server disconnect

Question

In the midst of an O365 deployment, the server went offline. We have about 150 clients that are now stuck in progress and it doesn't appear any are going to continue the task sequence. It's been 14 hours and none have resumed.
Unfortunately, part of the task sequence was checking for a specific Office version first, uninstalling it, then proceeding with the new 365 deployment. This means that all these devices uninstalled the old Office and do not have the new one since that is where it stopped, so they are without any Office currently. I believe this also means that I can't just re-run the deployment since part of the prerequisities is having the old version of Office so I assume the task will skip them as not being eligible.
How can I force the rest of the task sequence to continue as soon as possible? I've tried re-running the App Eval and Machine Policy Cycles but that didn't seem to have any effect.

Answer 1

You will need to modify the logic to either install with no Office installed, or try to detect that it used to be installed. Perhaps a file or registry setting is left over that you can also detect on.

Task sequences shouldn't run past 12 hours. What have you got the Maximum allowed run time set to?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/osd/deploy-use/manage-task-sequences-to-automate-tasks

Answer 2

If I create a new deployment, it would have to be done by direct query of all these devices which is what I'm trying to avoid. These devices would no longer be part of the original collection since they are now missing the original application that puts them in the device collection to begin with. That's why I'm hoping to fix the existing one. I would have to export all the failed ones that show as successful and manually enter them into a new collection.

There is an uninstall package and app deployment along with creating the desktop icons as part of the Task Sequence.

It's just frustrating to see they were obviously not successful since the task sequence never completed, but they are showing as successful. If I look at the details, it clearly shows only 2 of the 7 tasks were done. I'm just not sure why they're in successful status with that being the case.

Ah well, I might just push it with Batchpatch instead so I don't have to keep fighting with SCCM.

Thanks for responding.

Answer 3

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why it came back as success.

Can you check what the SMS_ClientAdvertisementStatus.LastStateName value is for some of these clients for that particular deployment ID?

You can use this WQL query:

select SYS.ResourceID,SYS.ResourceType,SYS.Name,SYS.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SYS.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SYS.Client from sms_r_system as sys inner join SMS_ClientAdvertisementStatus as offer on sys.ResourceID=offer.ResourceID  WHERE AdvertisementID = '<Deployment ID>'