February, 2017

Managing Automatic Deployment rules when you don't live in the USA

Update:

Starting with SCCM 1802

Automatic deployment rules can be scheduled to evaluate offset from a base day. Meaning, if patch Tuesday actually falls on Wednesday for you, the evaluation schedule can be set for the second Tuesday of the month offset by one day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Yearly Check

Currently Microsoft releases updates on the second Tuesday every month (USA Time) so we run our automatic deployment rules on the second Wednesday of every month (Australia time). This generally works well however some months start on a Wednesday so the ADR gets triggered early.
At the start of the year visit https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/weekday-wednesday-1
to get a list of months that start on a Wednesday. Create a calendar reminder to modify the enabled ADRs to run on the 3rd Wednesday, and create a calendar entry to set this back to the second Wednesday after the ADR has ran.
Edit the enabled rules under Software Library \ Software Updates \ Automatic Deployment Rules
Right Click -> Properties and go to the Evaluation Schedule tab
Click Customize and set it to the third Wednesday
The day after the ADR is run, set the schedule back to the second Wednesday.

Disabling Windows File Explorer banner advertising

Microsoft has soo much advertising power with Windows 10, they can now put banners up in Windows Explorer via updates. You may see one such as this:
'Save your documents and photos to OneDrive' or 'Get the best deal on your cloud storage with OneDrive'

The setting is called Show Sync Provider Notifications however it has been used for other purposes such as when you do a feature update

 

 

 

To prevent this from happening push out a group policy User preference
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Value: ShowSyncProviderNotifications
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value Data: 00000000
Base: Hex