We're excited to announce the general availability of Windows Update for Business reports, the evolution of our Update Compliance solution. Designed for rapid innovation, it combines organizational and device-level reporting with actionable data and insights. In this post, you will learn how to get more from Windows updates monitoring with customized reports on rich deployment data through seamless integration with multiple Microsoft 365 tools, Azure Monitor, and Log Analytics. We recommend you move to this new solution as soon as possible.
A few weeks ago, we posted an article Announcing Windows Update for Business reports explaining the improvements that were coming. Now, you can access this new experience with the following reports:
- Quality updates: Monitor security updates across all devices, including expedited updates.
- Feature updates: Monitor feature updates across all devices, including end of service, applicable safeguards, and Windows 11 eligibility reporting.
- Delivery optimization (preview): Bandwidth savings % across all content-types with additional reporting for devices using Microsoft Connected Cache.
Look inside the Windows Update for Business reports
Access Windows Update for Business reports from the Insights Hub in the Azure portal. This is the primary entry point for accessing the reports. Azure Insights is a curated experience powered by Azure Workbooks that provides you with a monitoring view for your Azure resources. You will find Windows Update for Business reports under "Other".
Let's look at some core reporting capabilities available to you with Windows Update for Business reports.
Organizational and device-level reporting
In the experience, we've introduced a concept of an update-status view and device-status view in both the feature update and quality update reports. You can use the update-status view to track the progress of your targeted updates (including those managed by Windows Update for Business deployment service).
You can use the device-status view to check how devices are configured and target specific devices that aren't updating due to an issue flagged with an alert. The image below illustrates the flyout that appears once you select the name of a specific device you want to review.
Switch from one report view to another right under the summary cards for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). By differentiating update compliance and device compliance, you have the best of both worlds to help with the success of future deployments. New content reports in the future (e.g., drivers and firmware) will follow the same pattern.
Actionable data and insights
Sometimes a device hits a snag before finishing the installation of an update. To help understand what's going on, we've improved the alerting experience throughout the report. With more call-to-action alerts and recommendations on how to resolve them, you can do a first-level triage to fix devices that aren't updating.
We recommend trying to address the top alerts that are impacting most of your devices first to have the largest impact:
- From the overview page, select the Total active alerts KPI card to see the top errors and the number of impacted devices.
- Sort the list by the number of devices from there.
Interested in trying this experience for your own Windows update compliance goals? Let's see how you can enroll in Windows Update for Business reports or transition from Update Compliance if you're a current user.
Enroll in Windows Update for Business reports
If you've already enabled the public preview of what we earlier called Azure Workbooks for Update Compliance, you're all set!
If you haven't, you can enroll your tenant once you have met the prerequisites:
- Signed up for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD enrolled or hybrid-joined).
- Configured devices to send diagnostic data to Microsoft for use with Windows Update for Business reports.
To request enrollment, please sign in with one of the following Azure AD user roles:
- Intune administrator
- Windows Update for Business administrator
- Global administrator
Alternatively, you can sign in with the Intune policy and profile manager role.
Enroll within the Azure Workbook experience itself. You'll practically follow the path from the Azure portal to Monitor > Workbooks > Windows Update for Business reports > Get started > Windows Update for Business reports enrolment. The full walkthrough is outlined in Enable Windows Update for Business reports. Here you'll be able to configure your Azure subscription and Log Analytics Workspaces, under which you want your data to be populated.
If you're new to this, see how to easily create an Azure Subscription and Log Analytics workspaces.
Transition plan for Windows Update for Business reports
If you are an existing Update Compliance user, the legacy experience will continue to be supported and work as you're accustomed to for a limited time, until a full transition has been made. However, we are no longer accepting new enrollments for the Update Compliance solution. What this means:
- On November 30th, Update Compliance will no longer be available for download in the Azure marketplace.
- On November 30th, the ability to re-generate a CommercialID for existing deployments will be disabled.
If you're an existing user, to continue to receive update data through our legacy Update Compliance solution, plan to enroll in Windows Update for Business reports by January 15, 2023. Please note that only Azure AD joined (or hybrid-joined) devices will be supported from this point forward. On March 31, 2023, we will end support for the legacy Update Compliance experience and stop providing update data to this product.
We encourage you to enroll into Windows Update for Business reports now, to avoid any workflow or dependencies disruption during this transition. For example, if you have custom dashboards that are using the old Log Analytics tables, we urge you to start transitioning and building on top of the new data schema.
Learn more and enroll today!
Windows Update for Business reports is built for you, based on the feedback of many Update Compliance users and all who have participated in the preview. With a revamped user experience, richer update deployment data and better alert monitoring, we are confident that these new reports will help you better manage your update compliance goals.
To learn more, watch the Microsoft Technical Takeoff session video for an explanation and illustration of Windows Update for Business reports experience.
Visit Windows Update for Business reports overview for official documentation.
Continue the conversation. Find best practices. Visit the Windows Tech Community.
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