I am running SCCM 2012 R2 in a CAS/Primary Site environment.  In the Client Setting > Client Device Settings > Software Inventory, I have enabled software inventory on clients.  Under the "Inventory these file types", I have set some files to inventory.  After a couple of weeks, I run a web report on a particular file that I placed in the "Inventory these file  types" and it works fine.  My question is:  How long does it take before I can run the web report called "Computers with a specific file" when I add new file types in the Software Inventory section.  This is something I never tested and I need real time reports (or within an hour) on file inventory.  I have the Scheduled software inventory and file collection occurring every 1 hour.  Its been over 4 hours now.  I even initiated the software Inventory cycle on my test computer to see if the Web Reports generate something.  Any help, I would appreciated,

thanks

It can take days for SW inventory to complete! Hence why I never recommend enable it! Read this.

http://www.enhansoft.com/blog/slow-software-inventory-cycle-in-sccm-2012

Why exactly do you want to inventory a file? Why not use a DCM for this?

To finish Garth's thinking above, Software Inventory inventories files, not installed software. For installed software, hardware inventory already collects this info from ARP and this in turn can be enhanced by enabling asset intelligence. There are of course different reports to report this collected info though.

I am trying to run the web report for a file called xyz.ini as an example.   We have internal custom apps that have a certain file with a modified time stamp on it that we keep tabs on. What is DCM? Since I know this works, I just want to know if I there is a way to generate this report faster

DCM is now called "Compliance Settings" in 2012. It will validate that a given characteristic on a target system matches an expected value. In this case, it can compare the date of a given file against an expected date and return a compliant or not compliant status which can be reported on.

I will give it a shot.  How long would it take to give me results back once I have it setup? 

A baseline can be scheduled to evaluate at any time and at any interval that you wish and results will be reported immediately (immediately in ConfigMgr time). Note however, that there is an up to two hour random delay from the deadline specified in the baselines deployment so in reality, results will be returned within around 3 hours of deployment (1 hour for policy refresh + up to the 2 random hours).

OK, thank you. will let you know if it is what I am looking for.

I know have both reports working (Software Inventory & Compliance Settings).  I prefer the web report "Computers with a specific file" then the "Compliance & Settings Management".  It gives me more data about the file then the Compliance Report.  The Compliance Report just tells you if you are compliant or not.  Since I never used this option before (setting up Compliance baseline), it does a lot of cool stuff that will be useful for other things.  If there is a way for the Compliance Report to give you some detail information on what is compliant or not, let me know.

thanks