Under some objects, I see the command called Force Update. What does it do?
The Workgroup Server caches much of the data it collects. This is done for performance reasons to optimize both the monitoring and user experience. In most cases, the data returned from the user comes from the cached data. The frequency of update in the cache is configurable and thus the data returned could be slightly out of date. Using the Force Update command instructs the WGS to refresh the cache from the source data immediately. This might be used when there is a problem with an object, or objects, and the current state is needed. Since the request has to go to the source, it can be slower than normal responses.
It is also possible to set some viewlets into Force Refresh mode which updates the data for all displayed data as described in this article.