The feature was basically already requested back in 2016 but wasn't implemented to date.
The old request can be found @ https://configurationmanager.uservoice.com/forums/300492-ideas/suggestions/13617639-software-center-add-support-for-direct-link-to-ap

Mark Silvey wanted me to share our use-case so that others can chime in, so here I am.

(skip to TL;DR for the actual feature request)

Following scenario is currently happening at my workplace: We have over 4000 clients and about 1500 of them have "Cisco AnyConnect" installed as VPN client. That includes notebooks and regular computers used for homeoffice.

Now we need to update "Cisco AnyConnect" to a new version. Sadly the update (.msi file) will basically uninstall the old version - terminating any open VPN connection - and then install the new version.
With the number of people currently working from home that would cause a lot of calls to our IT support hotline ... so we were looking for something to inform the users about the need to update the software, what will happen and what they need to do to establish a VPN connection again so they can resume their work.

Mailing everyone potentially affected is clearly out. The internal "News" site is ignored by too many people. To my knowledge SCCM doesn't offer any good way to actually show the user pre-installation information.

TL;DR

So I was looking at https://www.imab.dk/windows-10-toast-notification-script/ (respectively https://github.com/imabdk/Toast-Notification-Script) and it practically offers everything we need. (Minus a few minor features I already asked about on Github's issue tracker.)

Basically the tool will pop up a toast notification, inform the user about what is going on and show and give the user three options:
- Install - Opens up the Software Center
- Snooze - Hide the toast for X minutes before it pops up again
- Dismiss - Hide the toast until the next time the script is triggered by the SCCM client

Behind the "Install" button hides a link to e.g. "softwarecenter:SoftwareID=ScopeId968C5854-F7DB-48D1-B4AA-C4DCEAE28031/Application2360a124-41a9-4d27-a400-41e0a628ad32". And here lies the problem.

The "Install" button will only open the page of the software in the Software Center. And then the user has to click "Install" once more. But what I'd really like to do is have a softwarecenter: protocol link that will let the users skip the extra click on "Install".

The application deployment for the "Cisco AnyConnect" VPN client would be just offered to the user (with a deadline in a couple of weeks/months) so that the installation wouldn't run automatically. The user would get the toast notification and upon clicking the "Install" button in the toast the user would open the Software Center and trigger the "Install" action at the same time.

I'm aware that triggering random applications from toast notifications is not supported (for obvious security reasons). But they do explicitly support protocol links, among them "softwarecenter:". I feel like this would be a really awesome addition - considering you can nowadays more or less open any page in the Software Center already ... and there shouldn't be any security concerns either, since everything available in the Software Center should be curated already.

I'd like to see some more dynamic notifications in the way Software Center communicates to users.

For example, a device pending a restart seems to just sit with a status of waiting to install - could this be changed so that if a device is pending a restart either through ConfigMgr or the reboot flag on the device a user message is displayed advising users to reboot and retry.

There are occasions in application installs, inplace upgrades where ConfigMgr is doing exactly what it should do but presents the user with a failure message rather than a more appropriate user message that would a) provide a better user experience but more importantly b) not show ConfigMgr in a negative light that creates more work for ConfigMgr admins.

When adding dependencies to an application in ConfigMgr, there is no way of giving the user an informational error message if requirements are not met. The user will simply see “This software is not applicable to your device.”

We need to use dependencies on an application that require Adobe Acrobat Pro / Reader to be installed. The problem is that the customer has multiple versions of Acrobat Pro/Reader, so we cannot automatically install it.

If we could display a more informational error message to the customer: “Please install the appropriate Adobe Acrobat Pro / Reader first from Software Center to continue the installation”. They could easily solve the problem themselves.

Currently, when a Program option is set to 'Configuration Manager restarts computer', the return code is evaluated for 0 or non-zero only. A return of 0 restarts the computer whereas a non-zero is considered a failure and does not reboot the computer. The Site Control List already has Success, SuccessRebootRequired and FailureNonRetry return codes defined. I'm guessing they are used for Applications but they should also be used for Programs.

Please change the 'After running' option from 'Configuration Manager restarts computer' to 'Configuration Manager controls restart' and support the Site Control List return codes.

** Maybe change Configuration Manager logs user off to support Site Control List return codes too :)