Otdfbt

I am trying to make the process between SCCM deployments and the Software Center (configmgr) faster, if not seamless.

Right now, applications generally take about 1-2 hours to populate properly. However, by going to the "Configuration Manager" under the Windows Control Panel, there is an "Actions" tab. Generally 5 minutes after running these "Actions", the software will populate inside the Software Center.

The downside of this is the user interaction with the "Actions" pane...I can't have a user going through this process when they request a new application that needs to be deployed through SCCM.

I have have played around with using "net stop ccmexec" and "net start ccmexec" to manually run all of these "Actions" on the start command, but it feels a bit archaic. Does anyone have any suggestions how to speed this process up? I feel there is something simple I am missing.

Which SCCM Version do you use?

In SCCM 2012 R2 you could use the "Client Notification" Function of the Console. With this function you could let the Client/Collection Download the Computer or User Policy. This should speed it up.
If you use SCCM 2012 you could use the Right Click Tools (http://www.nowmicro.com/rct/) to Update the polices from the SCCM Console.

Another Option could be to modify the client settings. There you could change the polling interval (under Client Policy). Lower interval -> Clients gets Deployments faster.

You can modify your software deployment client settings under AdministrationClient Settings - open the properties of whichever client setting object you want (or create a new one), then under the General tab, make sure that the Software Deployment box is checked. Then open the Software Deployment tab, and create a schedule under Schedule Re-evaluation for deployments.

Keep in mind that this will require computing resources for both the client and the server each time a re-evaluation is performed...

One utility I use to trigger the inventory actions is: Client Center for Configuration Manager

You can use it to begin or restart individual deployment, updates, or other tasks.

Note: WinRM is required on all endpoints for this to work.

For an update, you could trigger the Software Update Evaluation using the following option:

The best way to get deployments to show up in software center is to use the configuration manager in the control panel. Run that and go to the actions tab, select machine policy retrieval and evaluation cycle. The deployment should show up quickly. I typically allow about 1 minute between starting the deployment and running the machine policy retrieval and evaluation cycle and the deployment comes up every time.

I was able to do this via script, might help. I didn't see this documented anywhere really. I have added it to my post imaging script and it seems to get sccm to start downloading software almost immediately.

Just run these powershell commands. They correspond to the actions in the system center control panel. Might not need all of these tasks run, like I am personally omitting the software update tasks (windows update), because i think that might save time. I hope it helps. The reference for all the strings and what they do is on the link below.

Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000121"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000003"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000010"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000021"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000022"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000031"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000114"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000113"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000111"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000026"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000027"
Invoke-WMIMethod -Namespace rootccm -Class SMS_CLIENT -Name TriggerSchedule "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000032"

Reference: https://www.systemcenterdudes.com/configuration-manager-2012-client-command-list/