Save BPT without any hosts defined

[amartin]

Hello,

I recently purchased a BatchPatch license and am working on configuring it. One thing I would like to do is be able to configure settings for Windows updates, particularly setting a list of excluded updates via Actions – Windows updates – Filter which available updates are included or excluded when downloading/installing – Exclude specific updates (textual). This works well and I am able to exclude the list of updates, however I cannot seem to save these settings as a BPT unless I add some hosts to the grid. I’d like to ideally save just the settings and no hosts, that way I can open up the template and drag and drop a text file containing the list of hosts to run onto it. Is this possible?

[doug]

What you are describing is not possible in the current version of BP. The exclusions are saved per-row, so you must have host names for them to be saved with.

On a separate note, if you are continually excluding the same updates each month, then I would encourage you to re-evaluate your process.

If you are using WSUS, then you should decline the updates on the WSUS server so that they are not made available to target computers, and then there is no need to exclude anything on targets.

If you are not using WSUS, then you should consider hiding the updates on each target system so that they do not continue to appear each month. To do this, use the ‘Actions > Windows Updates > Hide/unhide…’ option. Once the updates are hidden you will no longer need to exclude them. However, it *is* true that if Microsoft re-releases an update, it will move back into the ‘available updates’ group. One of the more recent examples of this behavior is with updates for GWX (Get Windows 10). People are hiding the updates only to see them re-appear at a later date. This leads me to my next suggestion…

If you are specifically trying to avoid the updates that are involved with the Windows 10 upgrade and GWX, I would suggest you follow the Microsoft sanctioned method for blocking the upgrade, which is described more here: How to Block the Windows 10 Upgrade. Then you do not need to continually try to avoid the same updates from month to month.

-Doug

[amartin]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the suggestions. I am not using WSUS, so I could hide the updates, but I am concerned about the case you mentioned where Microsoft re-releases an update. In addition to the GWX updates, I’m also concerned about the telemetry updates backported to Windows 7, so I think I need to keep excluding them since as far as I know there’s no official Microsoft way to block them.

I’m fine just manually entering an exclusion list each time – just thought I’d check if there was a better way. Thanks!

[Author]

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