SCCM - Software Center / "Available" Deployment and Update Content

[Chris]

I'm just getting started with PMPC, and our crew here is pretty much self-taught in SCCM, so if this is a dumb question, please bear with me.

From my understanding, when an app has updates, PMPC will drop the new files in and do the equivalent of an Update Content on the SCCM Application.  My question is what then happens in the following scenarios:

• "Required" Deployment - app is forcefully installed on a collection of devices (we tend NOT to target required deployments to user collections)
• "Available" Deployment - app is available to a collection(s) of users or devices, and the users can install from Software Center

I'm assuming that for required deployments, SCCM will notice the new version number and automatically redeploy the updated app to the collection?  I'm also further assuming that the PMPC installer will gracefully take care of removing the old version if needed?  Or perhaps SCCM does an uninstall / reinstall cycle?

My main worry is for available deployments where folks already have the app installed from Software Center.  Will SCCM automatically redeploy to those people?

Oh, and I just came up with a third class of installs - what if the application was on the user's device before we made it available?  Is SCCM smart enough to realize this and add that device to the "devices where XX is installed" list?

As you can probably see, I'm just trying to wrap my head around what to expect to happen once I start replacing our current deployments with PMPC deployments.  I'd rather not have any user-facing surprises if I can help it.

I appreciate any input anyone might have!

-Chris

[Antony (Patch My PC)]

Hi Chris,

No silly questions here

For application updates, the publisher will send any products you have enabled down to WSUS and then these will be pulled into SCCM on the next SUP sync that runs after our publisher sync finishes. These updates will then appear under "All Software Updates" in the SCCM console. It is then up to you how you choose to deploy these to your end user devices, but the updates will only update existing installs of the applications across your end user devices, if a device doesn't have the app installed then our detection method scripts will not pick it up so nothing will happen.

For application base installs, the publisher will send the selected products directly to your SCCM console when our publisher sync runs, again from here it is completely up to you how you deploy these to your end user devices. Under ConfigMgr apps tab in the publisher within "Options" you can choose to "update an existing apps metadata....." this would then overwrite the previous application in the console whilst retaining the set deployment.

For any available app deployments, these will still show up as available in the Software Center if they have an older version of the app installed. So if you choose the option previously mentioned, those apps will be available in the Software Center to end users that already have the app, but an older version installed.

If you would like to book a setup call, one of our engineers can run through how integration works and how the apps and updates also work and how they behave depending on how you deploy them - https://patchmypc.com/schedule-setup-call

If I can help any further then let me know.

Thanks

Antony