Automatic Deployment of Patch Tuesday Software Updates

The Automatic Deployment Rules feature allows you to automate the deployment of software updates. You can use it to automatically deploy the Patch Tuesday software updates for test purposes or prepare the deployment in production. Depending on your requirements, you can configure an automatic deployment rule for Windows 8 or 8.1 Patch Tuesday updates by creating an automatic deployment rule with the following steps:

1. Create a new software update group each time the rule runs. This way you are able to group the update groups per Patch Tuesday cycle, and you will limit the size of the software update deployment.
2. Select Enable The Deployment after this rule has run.
3. Select a collection with your test systems where you want to automatically test the Patch Tuesday patches.
4. Supply the following search criteria for the rule:
     ◆ Product: Windows 8 ORWindows 8.1
     ◆ Date Released Or Revised: Last 1 Day
     ◆ Update Classification: Security Updates

 

5. Before going further, preview the number of updates that will be initially discovered. This way you can test your criteria before going into production and, for instance, accidently automatically deploying hundreds of updates.
6. Evaluation Schedule: Be sure the evaluation runs after the Software Update Synchronization Schedule on the second Tuesday of every month.
7. Deployment Schedule: Enable the availability of the deployment for four hours after the deployment is created so that you are sure that the deployment has been distributed throughout your Configuration Manager hierarchy. Configure whether you want the deadline for the deployment.
 

After you configure the rest of the automatic deployment rule, the rule will create a software update
deployment every second Tuesday of the month.