Can I automate Validation?

Yes, you can include it as part of an automated background query, as shown below.

IMPORTANT: Validation does impose more overhead and will lengthen the time to completion of the background query. Because of variables, like patch size, file count etc., its hard to give a definitive answer to how much extra overhead is involved but it will add significant work because of the specific file checks that must occur. You may want to try Validation interactively to get a feel for the loading, before automating it with querying. You could query, the Validate a sample machine, and check the logs for time information.

In the example above, the background query is scheduled for every Sunday. We will re-enumerate the network, picking up new hosts, and add validation to the query task. We'll keep our existing query results (rather than have them deleted) in the event query fails for a certain target machine.

Because background querying applies to all managed machines for the Master Agent, a lot of validation data is potentially generated, so you may be interested in logging and reporting.