Windows Update for Business deployment service

Expediting Windows quality updates

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This week is all about expediting the installation of the latest Windows quality updates. Expediting the installation of the latest Windows quality updates can be useful to quickly mitigate security threats when the normal update process wouldn’t facilitate in that deployment yet. That can be achieved because the deployment of expedited Windows quality updates is done without needing to pause or edit the existing update process. It basically enables the IT administrator to temporarily override the deferrals and deadlines to install the specified update as quickly as possible. And that can be used for the most recent monthly quality update as well as an out-of-band security update. This post will look closer at the concept of expediting Windows quality updates, followed with the steps to …

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Enabling hotpatch for Windows 11 Enterprise

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This week is all about the latest changes in updating Windows 11 devices. That change is the introduction of hotpatch updates for Windows 11 Enterprise. Hotpatching helps organizations with keeping Windows secure, while minimizing the disruptions for the user. A significant step in keeping Windows more secure and productive. Hotpatching removes the requirement for Windows devices to reboot after every update installation, while still providing a complete set of security fixes. That’s exactly the point of importance for the user experience, as the device has less required reboots. This post will start with a brief introduction about Windows hotpatch, followed with the configuration steps. This post will end with experiencing the configuration. Note: The hotpatch technology is already being used for two years on Windows …

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Smoothly introducing new feature updates for Windows 11 as optional updates

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This week is all about a new method to smoothly introduce a new feature update within the organization. That new method is the ability to create a feature update deployment policy with the option to make the new feature update available as an optional update. By making the latest feature update, or any other feature update that eventually must be deployed, available as an optional update, the user is still in control of actually installing the update. That leaves the IT administrator in control of making the feature update available and the user in control of the installation. Doing that, adds an easy step to smoothly introducing a new feature update in the organization. Besides a smooth process, this also provides an easy start when …

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Getting started with Windows driver update management

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This week is about a very recent introduced feature around updating Windows devices and that feature is driver updates. Driver update management on itself is not that new, as that was introduced a few months ago as a part of the Windows Update for Business deployment service. However, being able to use Microsoft Intune to manage driver updates via that deployment service is definitely something new. That makes it a lot easier to use the driver management functionality. Microsoft Intune introduced a new Driver updates for Windows 10 and later profile that does all the heavy lifting for managing driver updates on Windows devices. This post will start with an introduction about Windows driver update management, followed with the steps for creating and assigning the profiles. …

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Getting familiar with the Windows Update for Business deployment service

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This week is a follow-up on last week. Last week the focus was on getting started with the Windows Update for Business deployment service and this week is about getting more familiar with the Windows Update for Business deployment service. Last week the focus was on getting information and this week the focus is on adding information. More specifically, this week is about enrolling devices, creating groups, adding devices to groups, creating feature update deployments and assigning groups to feature update deployments. In other words, this week is about creating custom feature update deployments. For the basics of the Windows Update for Business deployment service have a look at last weeks post, this post will continue on that information. This post will go through the …

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Getting started with the Windows Update for Business deployment service

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This week is about the Windows Update for Business deployment service. That subject has been touched recently when discussing the different options for upgrading devices to Windows 11, but that subject never got the attention that it deserves. The deployment service provides control over the approval, scheduling, and safeguarding of updates delivered from Windows Update. And the often still unknown part is that it’s actually actively used already within Microsoft Intune. The Feature updates for Windows 10 and later profile and the Quality updates for Windows 10 and later profile, both rely on that deployment service. This post will start with a quick introduction of the Windows Update for Business deployment service, followed with the basics of the deployment service APIs. Introduction to the Windows …

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Different options for upgrading devices to Windows 11

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This week is again all about upgrading devices to Windows 11, by using Microsoft Intune. When discussing the upgrade to Windows 11, the first and foremost thing to mention is that managed devices won’t automatically upgrade to Windows 11. There is always an action required by the IT administrator to make sure that managed devices are allowed to upgrade to Windows 11. The options to configure those managed devices, however, were limited when using Microsoft Intune. That has changed with the latest service release (2111) of Microsoft Intune. That service release introduced a few more options for managing and controlling the upgrade to Windows 11. This post will go through those different methods for upgrading devices to Windows 11, followed the configuration options for those …

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