philipnet

Hi Steve,

You're not the only one in this boat!

All my SMS training has been on the job - fuelled by necessity and curiosity.

Unfortunately I've had to split my time between SMS and the other helpdesk duties that are my job spec. This has meant that SMS can go untouched for weeks .

At the moment I'm trying to finalise our patch management policy. I've found it easier to download all the possible relevant patches and then target a particular collection. I'm creating one program/advert per MS bulletin as MS have a tendancy to withdraw/replace certain patches wither newer one.

With SP1, SMS lists all software updates that have been released in the last month as well as it's old pre-SP1 behaviour of only listing patches that have been requested. To create packages/adverts for old patches just setup a couple of machines that match your varied baseline (i.e. clean install of OS and earliest version of applications, get SMS to inventory them and they should start requesting the packages.