Windows Autopatch Guide Blog 1 of 7
Planning for Windows Autopatch is one of the core tasks you need to be doing regardless of the current patching state you are in. Mainly because it has few components and, in most cases, the responsibilities are spread across the team.
I would like to dedicate this space to discuss about below.
Understanding your end-goals
To understand the end goals, let’s look at some areas of consideration.
What Autopatch patches?
- Windows patches
- M365 Apps for Enterprise
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft Edge
What problems does Autopatch solve?
- Poorly managed patch management cadences
- Transition to Windows 11
- Transition to a more modern patching solution
- Time management issues in IT when it comes to using resources in more meaningful work such as IT Projects than on Monthly updates
- Improved Issue Reporting
- Using Entra ID groups rather than On-premises systems to manage updates
- Address vulnerabilities and Windows quality updates as soon as possible to improve security
This will help you to build your case as to why you need to move to Windows Autopatch. Even more, if you are devices are managed by Microsoft Intune today, you are just a few steps away from using this feature which can be a good thing in your planning.
Roles and Responsibilities
This section mainly looks at the responsibilities of Windows Autopatch and who (IT or Windows Autopatch)
There are a few main points where the responsibilities spread across and Microsoft Learn documents have outlined it well. Please check the below links for that.
Click on below sections to understand the workloads of each main section
Recommended deployment steps
Microsoft has created this wonderful one-stop high-level diagram that shows the steps of the Windows Autopatch Journey and has gone deeply into explaining every step.
Click on the below image to enlarge👇🏽
Click on below sections to understand the workloads of each main section
🔗Prepare➡️ 🔗Evaluate➡️ 🔗Pilot➡️ 🔗Deploy
Understanding constraints when migrating from other Microsoft services
If you are coming from Config Manager or Windows Update for Business, there are some changes that need to be done, in order to migrate the services to Windows Autopatch.
Also if the devices are moving from Config Manager or from WUfB, there are some existing GPOs, Registry values, and/ or Config Manager settings to be changed. Ideally, this can be done in the Pilot phase (Step 3) for the selected devices. And if all working well, that prerequisite can be added to the migration plan. I have further discussed this in the next Blog section.
🔗Migrating from WUfB to Windows Autopatch
🔗Optimized Deployment ath from WUfb to Windows Autopatch
🔗Migrating from Config Manager to Windows Autopatch
🔗Optimized Deployment ath from Config Manage to Windows Autopatch
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