About Staging And Distributing Software Bulletins - Symantec ALTIRIS PATCH MANAGEMENT SOLUTION 7.0 SP2 - FOR WINDOWS V1.0 Manual

46 Staging and distributing software bulletins and software updates

About staging and distributing software bulletins

About staging and distributing software bulletins
which is sent to Notification Server by the Software Update Plug-in. For example,
Internet Explorer version and OS version. Software updates are then installed
according to Microsoft specifications. For example, if Microsoft requires a restart,
then the computer is restarted after the update is installed. Restarts on managed
computers are minimized because the updates that do not require a restart are
installed before the software updates that do.
When a software update has been superseded and rendered obsolete by another
update or updates, the later update is installed.
Microsoft assigns severity levels to software updates, but you can also create a
custom severity level.
See "Customizing severity levels"
Caution: Microsoft provides the software updates that Patch Management Solution
for Windows distributes for Microsoft products. You must ensure that each
software update works correctly in your environment before deploying it. We
recommend that you first distribute any required software update in a test
environment before deploying it to your production environment.
You stage software bulletins from the Patch Remediation Center page, where all
available software updates are listed.
When you stage a software bulletin, all associated updates are downloaded to the
Notification Server computer.
When the number in the Updates column equals the number in the Downloaded
column, all updates for the software bulletin have been downloaded. Also, the
value in the Staged column changes to True.
See "Staging software bulletins"
After the bulletin is staged, you can create Software Update policies to distribute
the software update to managed computers.
Sometimes not all software updates can be downloaded for a software bulletin
because Microsoft may stop hosting the bulletin or relocate it. You cannot create
a Software Update policy unless all updates for a particular software bulletin or
update have been downloaded.
See "Distributing software updates"
on page 30.
on page 47.
on page 48.