SCCM updates: User Experience - Reboot notifications
Here is the User experience for the update process as I understand it:
1. System tray balloon appears saying 'software changes are required'
2. System tray balloon appears saying 'downloading and installing software'
3. System tray balloon appears saying 'Restart required: Recently installed updates require your machine to be restarted'
4. *It is here I would like the larger temporary notification reboot window to appear but it doesn't.
5. Permanent notification reboot window appears and stays on the screen
I would like option 4 to be possible. Without this it seems quite easy for users to miss seeing the balloon notification and therefore not know that a restart is coming.
It would be good if there was an option in Client Settings > Computer Restart to automatically show the temporary restart notification window. It would also be good if there was an option here to permanently set the 'SCNotification.exe' in Notification Area Icons to 'show icon and notification' to further improve the visibility to users of pending restarts so they know to save their work before they leave their computer for lunch or when they go home.
I've attached an image of the temporary notification window I am talking about
Thanks,
Andrew
andrewjohnporter
shared this idea
Doing work in this area. Please make sure your requests are included in the comments.
81 comments
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Ben Walter
commented
I agree with this. My users don't notice the initial system tray notification, and then complain that they have not been given enough time when the main restart window appears. If I was to set the main notification to appear immediately, they would complain that the message gets in the way and they can't hide it.
Ideally we would like the restart window to appear immediately, but with the option for the user to click postpone for a configurable number of minutes. Then the window would keep reappearing until the user either clicks reboot, or they are forced to reboot by the final permanent notification.
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Kelly Walsingham
commented
Allow more options like defferal for up to 2 hours and even have the number of hours allowed to be managed at the client settings level. And option to add customizable text so you can warn users that once they click restart it could take up to 20 minutes to apply all patches as it restarts etc.
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L U
commented
PowerShell AppDeploy Toolkit has interesting smarts regarding notifications, not just for potential restarts, but managing user expectations around applications that must be closed during product installs. A truly integrated solution would look at the technical/user interaction of product install from end-to-end, not just at restart.
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L U
commented
We have Available period before Deadline. Would like clearer messages at time of Available, cusomizable to repeatedly and persistently inform users of our schedule and what to expect, to encourage co-operation for earlier, less painful compliance.
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Bob Clements
commented
Specific to the Windows 10 IPU: I would like to see an option for users to 'Schedule my upgrade (or maintenance)'. When selected, users get a date/time picker (similar to Outlook appointment scheduling). From there they can choose a time that does not surpass the scheduled deadline. The default required time is 90 minutes, but admins can configure the value in the properties of the TS.
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Sven Mattheus
commented
Believe there are 2 things which could be improved:
1. SCNotification (especially / at least when indicating a pending reboot) should go not only to Win10's Action Center, but more important: should remain a "visible" icon on the Taskbar (in the foreground by default / not hidden away!) - so that a user is better aware of the pending reboot.
2. Leverage Win10 user configurable settings like "Active Hours and Restart Options " into the SCCM agent ( e.g. "Business Hours" ) for a more seamless experience. Users do not understand why they should configure these settings in 2 different locations...
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Jason Darst
commented
I concur with this. Our users are extremely unhappy with the update process, to the point that we may have to look at deploying defined maintenance windows for the entire population so they know exactly when updates will occur. No one notices the toast notifications. Unless it is extremely obvious, and almost impossible to ignore, they have other things they are worried about and then when updates close things or reboots happen, they are surprised and upset. I also would like to see a lot more possible customizations on notifications.
An option to set nag reminder periods
An option to have a notification window that was top of screen and obvious
An option to specify a must acknowledge as the deadline approaches for the install
An effective way to defer the installation once the deadline is reached that works (we've had a bug in with the current implementation)
Options to allow the user to specify a time for the installation to happen would be great. With an option to have the reboot happen immediately if they want.
These options should apply to any type of push be it software update, application object, or package
It would be nice if these options had a default for the client but also allowed configuration per deployment in case we need to do something different with an urgent deployment -
Glenn Turner
commented
Something to consider... 100% of our end-user fleet is Surface Pro and with everyone working different hours and having different requirements, we effectively never have a maintenance window that these devices are on in. We set updates to install outside the maintenance window, but suppress reboots. It's up to the user to restart, and because the current notification functionality is sub-optimal, they never see the one prompt that disappears within a few seconds. We end up emailing people asking them to restart. We don't force OS upgrade task sequences for the same reason - these are just available not required, because we can't control the prompts and reboot process enough.
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GT
commented
Perhaps also don't ever force a restart or a prompt while PowerPoint is running.
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Anonymous
commented
+1 for more granular control of the frequency of reboot messages
+1 for custom messages. It would be great to be able to send (deploy) custom messages to users similar to a package. Also being able to right-click a collection and send message to user would cool too.
+1 for messages the user MUST acknowledge.
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Anonymous
commented
I would like to see the ability to customize timeframes with snooze/remind time options based on when an update becomes available based on offsets from available and required times. Additionally, the ability to allow a user to postpone a restart indefinitely by snoozing repeatedly (ie: not actually allow them to select to postpone a restart, but to cause a nag that will eventually get them to restart, but more at their convenience) with a specified timeframe that can align with these intervals.
For instance, handling various scenarios (and more complex), such as this:
Day 1: Update 1 Available
Day 7: Update 1 Required - Automatically install outside maintenance window, but do not restart
---Would like to be able to do things like:
-Display a notification at availability time.
-Two days after it is available, the user can get notified of its availability every day if it has not yet shown for each user.
-Twelve hours after that (2.5 days after available time), this notification could start showing if they haven't seen it in the past 6 hours.
-Two days before its required, change it over to prompt the user to snooze the available reminder up to 4 hours. When the update becomes required and / or is installed, have a custom notification to prompt the user of a pending reboot, allowing them to snooze it up to two hours at a time for the next 72 hours.
-Should detect and prevent overlapping schedules, and force you to fill entire remaining schedule, or specify a default for areas where there is no schedule (preferably also configured)
-Some sort of settings priority for this similar to client settings... but, preferably in a way that the priorities can be changed a little more quickly, or at least sitting there waiting for a refresh to keep clicking increase priority. Something like a "move to priority # and shift any existing up/down".
-Would also be nice to be able to set all of this through ADR and deployments on the SUG and have creation template. Ability to load template independently for this section would also be cool. For instance, if setting up a complex schedule to be used across multiple ADRs/deployments, this notification schedule could be reused. Would be nice to be able to associate a set of schedule rules with an ADR/deployment (ie: just an object reference so it stays up to date rather than a template persay, but would be nice to have both options)Would also like to see the ability to display a prompt to the user prior to initiating or forcing a restart to help instances where someone opens a device on a Monday and has no choice but to restart sometime shortly thereafter. For instance, require at least one user to have seen the notification for the reboot to even be able occur. Something along similar lines of giving them some form of a custom snooze time that can be postponed indefinitely or per some schedule (ie: change it to three days after required date to be more rigid or something). Might not handle all situations as-is (ie: a lab environment) if its a multi-user scenario, but would help with things like devices assigned to or primary device of certain a single user.
Multiple notification options would be nice. Taskbar, toast, balloons, etc. Would like to see those customizable, at least, something like an IT department icon and logo and customizable sizes. Something like a "click to confirm restart" checkbox before allowing the user to click restart as a basic functionality. It would be nice to have full control of the UI, and have some variables available for display (ie: name of update currently installing if one is installing, progress %). Some ability to mod the XML directly to overcome any limitations here would work, too, but just thinking there should be something in SCCM that will pop it up automatically on a schedule made in rather than having to roll your own via task scheduler and CIM calls or something.
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Max Baldt
commented
When depolying updates with a deadline in the future, give us the "update and reboot" button in start menu - do it like it says: Update! and reboot. (SW center installs Updates and reboots machine afterwards). If you somehow manage to get the update and reboot buttons today (maybe you should start a career as magician?) it just reboots because the updates are installed already - so the buttons a pretty much useless today.
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Coreland Phillips
commented
I too would love a user must acknowledge pop up window option as Bryce suggested. The ability to toggle it off/on in Client settings would be a must in order that this type of behavior did not affect Kiosk/Podium/Manufacturing/Control machines. The goal of this request is specifically to let improve the USER experience by letting them know what is going to happen and when in an undeniably obvious way. So this really is a must have option for user assigned machines. An 'unexpected reboot' is about the most damaging thing there is to user trust in our patching methodology.
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Anonymous
commented
I support a manufacturing environment where some of the PCs are managing production machinery e.g. Autoclaves where the PC has to be running at all times to collect the Autoclave temperature/pressure data that proves the manufacturing process was correctly executed. Some of these production runs can last over 24 hours so the idea of a daily maintenance window doesn't really apply. At other times the Autoclave might not be in use for a period during the day and could safely be patched, but these periods are not predictable/do not have a pattern. I would like to designate a collection of PCs as having an "irregular maintenance window" and provide the user a simple to use "toggle" mechanism that allows them to indicate "available for maintenance" or "not available for maintenance". ConfigMgr should then apply updates at any time when the toggle is set to "available for maintenance". This does potentially mean that a PC might never get patched (but as we can't safely enforce patching on these PCs this is already the case) so it would also be useful if we could set these PCs to throw some sort of alert (email to the "primary user"??) if patching had not been permitted for more than a month - this would allow us to nag the Team Leader of the Manufacturing Cell directly if the Cell Operators were not choosing to set the "available for maintenance" option.
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Nectarios Gritzalis
commented
We definitely need improved visibility for the reboot notification, especially on Win10.
On Win 7 the notification balloon appears and stay on screen until the user performs any action and often is visible upon unlocking of the desktop. But on Windows 10 this is all broken and users simply never see the short notification(s), until the final un-closable dialog box.But I think it is imperative that any improvement to the reboot notification should focus on visibility only and not on anything that might disrupt the users from their work (except the final notification).
A notification that absolutely requires user action to close it, or a box in the middle of the screen as has been suggested, would be way too disruptive to the user and create new issues.
User experience should remain paramount. -
Bryce Steel
commented
After installation(s) complete that require a restart, we would like to see the "Your computer is about to restart" notification window open and remain visible until a user clicks the "Hide" button (with perhaps similar increasing frequency-triggers leading up to the non-hideable portion of the countdown even).
The toast notifications from the SCCM client / Software Center have proven ineffective at capturing our user's attention. While we currently use a default 24 hour restart countdown with 4 hours non-hideable, many users simply do not notice the toast notifications during the first 20 hours. Having a toggle in Client Settings to "Show restart countdown window until user clicks 'Hide' button" would save us many user complaints / help desk tickets!
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Mitch S
commented
These are great suggestions. The original post does a great job in highlighting the issue that is causing my company the most pain. It is the lack of notification around the actual reboot. When it comes to a feature update, the notifiications before the update deployment are less useful because you can warn the user and when they are finally ready to run it, the online portion kicks off and runs for over an hour. The user was expecting something to run reasonably quickly and then reboot right there when they are ready for the reboot. Sometimes they kick it off shortly before leaving for the day (with a laptop that they take with them). So they likely walk away or do something else and minimize or close software center, or close the lid and head home. So at a minimum need much more noticeable,reliable, and configurable restart notifications. Woud be cool if there were separate deadline dates for the deployment and the actual restart. And instead of a date, maybe an incremental time period after the deployment runs. So regardless of when the deployment runs, even if past the deadline, the restart deadline can be configured to run x days later. So if the deadline is OCT 30 and the user runs it on of after OCT 30 (maybe they were out of the office) whenever it finally runs, the restart deadline is say 3 days from when the deployment completed, with reminder notices before then to allow the user to restart now or postpone for a few hours. Another note, there is currently a restart reminder that runs when a user has run the deployment before the deadline where a user can restart now or postpone a few hours. The problem with that particular notication is that if the user hits cancel or just closes the window without selecting restart now or picking a time in the future, that notification window never returns. So if I deploy and make available on Sep 30 with a deadline Oct 30, the user runs it immediately on Sep 30, gets the message which states a reboot is required by Oct 30, dismisses the window by closing or cancelling, now there are no more reminders until Oct 30 deadline, which is worse than all other options because the user has no connection between that reboot request and actually running the deployment 30 days earlier, so we have an even angrier user.
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Daniel Hecht
commented
Would be great to see that the configmgr reboothandler trigger the OS api to deactivate fast startup temporary so that software updates are applied if the user shutdown the pc (instead of restart..)
For sure there are workarounds to setup such a behavior. But this should be a behavior "out of the box"
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Steven
commented
Would LOVE a way to set a group of users through User Client Settings that can cancel/defer mandatory reboot at least 1 one time these are people in my org that are IT OPS itself and they're stuck in internal CritSits themselves; they've asked me to give them ways to shut off SCCM; i'd rather not do this since i don't' know if they'll turn it back on. Reasoning is so their PCs don't' restart in the middle of a major incident If I identify them are CRITIAL/VIP users they should be able to have a chance to defer for their system in an emergency situation.
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Steven
commented
We just want a deferral system for required things before and after the deadline, first and then second one that will work into a and clear and persistent modal dialog locks on the windows shell for upcoming installation, installation occurring and restart. Include the application being installed; the time the restart is going to happen and the expected duration of the installation No more flyouts or balloon tips that are missed. Also notify the user when the next upcoming action will happen for anything that has previously failed, rather than it just saying "Past Due"