Automatic Deployment Rule (ADR) in SCCM

To use the Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard to create the Automatic Deployment Rule for your Patch Tuesday updates. Here are the steps:

1.     In the SCCM 2012 administrator console, navigate to the Software Library workspace.

2.     Select Software Updates, and choose Automatic Deployment Rules. Click the Create Automatic Deployment Rule option on the ribbon to launch the Create Automatic Deployment Rule Wizard.

3.     On the General page, which is shows in below screenshot, specify Patch Tuesday in the Name field and a description in the Description field. In the Collection field, enter or browse to the (Ex:SUM WRK Pilot I) collection you created in your environment. For the Each time the rule runs and finds new updates option, select Create a new Software Update Group. Although adding updates to an existing software update group is useful when creating an Automatic Deployment Rule for Endpoint Protection definition updates, it's not useful for regular software updates. Here you'll create a new group every month. Otherwise, you'll end up having too many updates in the group. (A software update group has a limit of 1,000 updates.) Clear the Enable the deployment after this rule is run check box. Click Next

       Specifying the General Information for the Automatic Deployment Rule

4.     On the Deployment Settings page, click Next.

5.     On the Software Updates page, select the following filters and add the specified search criteria: Date Released or Revised: Last 3 weeks; Update Classification: "Critical Updates" OR "Security Updates" OR "Updates Rollups" OR "Updates"; Title: -as below.

Confirm that your page looks like the one in below screenshot, then click Next.

Specifying the Filters and Search Criteria

6.     On the Evaluation Schedule page, select Enable rule to run on a schedule and click the Customize button. Configure the rule to run the second Tuesday of every month at a time of your choosing. Click OK, then click Next.

7.     On the Deployment Schedule page, configure the following settings. In the Time based on drop-down list, select Client local time. In the Software available time and Installation deadline sections, select As soon as possible. You don't have to worry about this deadline being too aggressive because this setting is being applied only to the devices in your pilot group. For the production workstations, I recommend making the updates available two days prior to the company-decided deadline. Updates will start downloading in the background when they become available and will install when the deadline is reached. Click Next.

8.     On the User Experience page, select Display in Software Center and show all notifications in the User notifications drop-down list. In addition, suppress the system restart on both servers and workstations, as shown in below screenshot. Click Next.

       Configuring the User Experience Settings for the Automatic Deployment Rule

9.     On the Alerts page, you can configure SCCM to send an alert when the compliance level drops below a certain percentage. To do this, select the Generate an alert when the following conditions are met check box. Then, in the Client compliance is below the following percent drop-down list, select 95. Finally, set the Offset from the deadline option to 35 days. This means that SCCM will generate an alert if the compliance level isn't at 95 percent 35 days after the specified deadline. Click Next.

10.  On the Download Settings page, configure the following settings. Select Download software updates from distribution point and install as the deployment option for the preferred distribution point. Select Download and install software updates from the fallback content source location as the deployment option to use when updates aren't available on any preferred distribution point. Select the Allow clients to share content with other clients on the same subnet check box. Select the If software updates are not available on preferred distribution point or remote distribution point, download content from Microsoft Updates check box. This is a new SP1 feature that allows clients to fall back and use Windows Update to download the content. The client will only download content for the updates you have approved. After making sure that your settings look like those in Figure 4, click Next.

      Figure 4: Specifying How to Download the Updates

11.  On the Deployment Package page, you can either select an existing deployment package or create a new one. For this example, create a new one, specifying a name and description for it. In the Package Source field, enter or browse to the folder containing the software update binary files. Leave the sending priority at the default of medium. Click Next.

12.  On the Distribution Points page, specify the distribution points or distribution point groups to which you want to distribute the package and click Next.

13.  On the Download Location page, select Download software updates from the Internet and click Next.

14.  On the Language Selection page, select the languages supported in your organization and click Next.

15.  On the Summary page, click Save As Template. In the Save As Template dialog box that appears, type Pilot Deployment I in the Name field and click Save.

16.  Click Next to have the wizard create the Automatic Deployment Rule. When it completes, click Close.

You'll now see the Patch Tuesday rule in the list of Automatic Deployment Rules. Manually run that rule by selecting it and clicking the Run Now option on the ribbon, as shown in below screenshot. Click Yes to start the process.

Running the Automatic Deployment Rule Manually