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Microsoftdrobinson This is a common question. Here are the best levers available today:
- Intelligent Active Hours: Enable this in Intune — it automatically adjusts active hours based on each device's usage patterns, which helps prevent reboots during typical work/meeting times
- Short deadline but + generous grace period: Grace period is what governs how long after going 'pending reboot' the device is forced to restart. This means that user meetings, presence, etc. will all be honored until grace period is hit.
- Active Hours max range: Can be set up to 18 hours, covering most work schedules
The honest answer is that once all deferral + deadline + grace windows are exhausted, the reboot will happen regardless of user activity. The best strategy is making the windows generous enough that users rarely hit the hard deadline, and Intelligent Active Hours keeps the forced restart outside their normal working pattern.
Thanks for the reply.
Deadline being restricted to a max of 7 days is part of the issue (be good if this could be extended to 30 days). Another improvement would be if you could have deadline without a grace period (confusingly 0 in grace is not "off" it is "no time at all"
In the UK it is common for people to take 14 or even 21 days off. This often means that if they start a vacation on the last day of deferral even an extended deadline and grace period expire while they are off so they get hit with the updates immediately.
Setting AutoRestart to 240 minutes (would be great of this was extended to 480 minutes) and forcing user dismissal of notification are also great levers.