Help With Software Updates End User Restart Notifications & Options

[BzowK]

Good Afternoon Guys (inc. Niall) -

 

I need help! I've done a ton of research and testing and finally am posting here to see what anyone can help me come up with.

 

The Issue

I set up SCCM 2012 from scratch for my company about 3 monhts ago. Software Updates were tested for a a while and are now starting to be deployed to all 700 workstations spread out among 4 physical locations (each with it's own DP of course.) With the nature of our company, we have some people working late hours sometimes so the IT Director was very specific about what he wanted set for these updates.

 

When Software Updates are deployed to computers, he wants a window - to appear - not a balloon notification - saying that their computer will restart in ~15 minutes. In this window, they should have the option to Postpone the installation including restart to a couple of different pre-specified time periods (15 min, 4 hours, 24 hours), and option to skip the timer & install immediatly.

 

The above is the ideal solution. Below is what I've gotten to work already as well as ideas I had to get it to work the way they want. We do have a maintenance window starting at 11:00pm Friday evening until early Saturday morning, but even during these times, they want the same notification.

 

What I've Tried & Ideas

Attempt

Advertising updates as available at 10:00pm with an installation deadline of 1:00am. This way, they would get the balloon notification, be able to choose if they wanted to go ahead and install, and even set the times they work to avoid interruption. Once installed, I have client setttings configured to give user a 15 minute window before restart.

Result

This was the best solution yet, but they still stressed they wanted a pop-up window - not balloon - so it wouldn't be missed. Also, even though I set the deployment deadline to 1:00am, some users brought their laptops in the next day, put them on the network, and the updates were instantly installed & rebooted. Lastly, for the 15 minute restart notification, they would prefer a postpone on it as well

 

Task Sequence Idea

I can't think of how to add a pop-up window to a software updates deployment, but can easily in a task sequence. I could either create a task sequence where there was a step created for every update needed with clauses to check for update before it ran, but that would be too much work.

 

Therefore, would it work if I were to advertise the updates needing to be installed to a collection as available, then create a task sequence which did a pop-up window, then a step to just "Install Software Updates (which is usually used for OSD)? Would this or separate step for each update be better? If this looks like the best option, anyone know of a script which would do pop-up window and move hostnames from the collection advertised to if they postpone?

 

Postponing Package Deployments with Reboots

I completely set up the Application Catalog when installing SCCM and went as far as filling out each application's details to where it looked great. They weren't fans, though, since even with approval needed, they didn't want users to be able to install software. Therefore, all software is done through packages.

 

For package installations / updates which require a reboot, I was told that they need to have the same or similar reboot postpone notification and option as well. I looked around and found this script, but haven't spent too much time on it yet.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to accomplish this goal easier or perhaps any alternative scripts?

 

Scripting

It looks like I may be doing a bit of scripting. I have used and edited many VBS, HTA, & other scripts before, but never made one from scratch. If there are no script resources for what I need and I must make my own, what direction should I go in? Also, should I perhaps try to dive into SCCM's SDK or would that not be helpful in my situation?

 

Thanks to all for your help and suggestions! Sorry for the long post - Thanks Again!

[Oneone]

Maybe you could use Wake on LAN and apply the updates during a weekend?