Creating an Advanced Software Management Policy

An Advanced Software Management policy is a collection of rules that manages third party software updates on devices.

Creating an Advanced Software Management policy helps you answer the following questions:

• When do you want to scan devices?
  In the Advanced Software Management policy, you set when the patch scan occurs and when it recurs.
• When do you want to install updates?
  Third party patch policies let you either choose the execution policy that controls when patches are installed or override the execution policy and set a different patch installation schedule.
• What devices do you want to update?
  Third party software patch policies let you choose which devices are eligible for patch management, which is part of the process of choosing which devices to patch. You can select devices that are eligible for patch management by setting up rules to include them automatically, or by selecting devices or groups individually.

What You Can Do

You can:

• Specify how frequently the devices under Advanced Software Management will check for new updates.
• Specify the time frame in which updates are installed after they are downloaded.
• Specify to which devices the Advanced Software Management policy applies through automatic application rules, or by selecting specific devices and groups.

Advanced Software Management policies also determine which devices the policy is applied to. You can set up automatic inclusion rules, or manually apply an Advanced Software Management policy to devices and groups.

Automatic inclusion rules only take effect when the Advanced Software Management policy is added to an active Service Plan or a Service in an active Service Plan. If you apply the Advanced Software Management policy to devices and groups manually, those devices and groups are under Advanced Software Management immediately.

You can create as many Advanced Software Management policies as you require.

To create a new Advanced Software Management policy

You can create a new Advanced Software Management policy by either copying an existing policy and editing it or by starting with a new policy.

For information about managing patches for macOS devices, see Advanced Software Management for macOS Devices.

1. In Service Center, click Service Delivery > Policies > Advanced Software Management.
2. Do one of the following:
   • Click the check box of a policy to copy, click Copy.
   • Click New.
3. In the Create New Policy section, type a name and description for the policy.
4. Click Create.
5. Click the Settings tab, and click Modify.
6. From the Scanning Frequency list, select how often you want the devices to check for new patches.
   The default 22 hours is good for almost all circumstances. You may want to have devices that receive definition updates check more frequently.
7. In the Deployment Schedule section, do one of the following:
   • To have the policy use an execution schedule to schedule patches, select the Install as per applicable Execution Schedule option button. For more information about execution schedules, see Setting Up Execution Schedules.

   • To have the policy override any execution schedules applied to a site or group, select the Override Execution Schedules option button. For more information about overriding the execution schedule, see To set up a third party software patch schedule that overrides any applicable execution schedules.

     If you select the Install as per applicable Execution Schedule option, and there is no execution schedule applied, your devices won’t be patched.
8. Optionally, select the Assign the newly added devices of this Patch Policy to the following Approval Group check box to automatically add all devices that will get applied to this policy to an approval group that you select from the list, then select an approval group. This option helps you facilitate the installation of patches by automatically approving patches for the devices in this policy.
9. Optionally, select the Apply changes to existing devices in this policy check box to add the existing devices in this policy to the approval group that you selected.
10. Click Save.