Updates for Windows
preparation
Section titled “preparation”If you don’t have Enterprise licensing, skipping Autopatch to take advantage of device update policies (Formerly Windows Update for Business) is a strong, second contender.
Ideally, you’ll one to setup 4 pilot groups for this.
- Update Preview devices
- Pilot devices
- VIP devices
- Broad ring
For your preview devices, you’ll want to ensure you have a handful of IT staff in your group, and some end-users. Often, IT staff fix their own issues, and may not realize it was update related. Having some users in your pilot group helps to highlight any issues with an incoming update.
Policy configuration
Section titled “Policy configuration”- Microsoft Product updates: Enabled
- Windows drivers: Ideally, you may want this enabled, unless you directly manage vendor-specific apps/driver update cycles.
- Quality update deferral period: You’ll want this configured depending on your 4 pilot groups. Such as VIP receiving up to 30 days deferral, but preview ring limited to 7 days.
- Feature update deferral period: Leave this as 0 so we can configure the feature update policy. Changing this prevents us using it.
- Upgrade Windows 10 devices to the latest Windows 11 release: Enabled, depending on your own readiness. You will likely want to pilot this elsewhere if you’ve not done any prep for win11.
- Set feature update uninstall period: Possible roll-back period. Configure this based on your needs, but should not be excessive. 14 days would be plenty to catch most issues.