When manually collecting via administration tool or by scheduled collect, NNS Service orders the selected agents to start collection. At the selected computer, agent.exe now begins to gather information and save it to a file in the agent install folder. The agent uses low system resources so it does not disturb anything. If setting is to collect everything, including exe-files, the collect may take several minutes.
When the collect is finished, a file transfer is started to Inventory Service. It begins to process the file, or insert in queue if there are more incoming transfers. The data in file is fed into the database. If filters and/or exclude rules are defined, they have effect on the data to be inserted in the database.
If a computer has been turned off and missed scheduled collect, the collect will run when agent is turned on.