The ConfigMgr product group just keeps on producing builds for us to test out and here is the latest one, ConfigMgr Technical Preview 1801. One of the new features they introduced that caught my attention was something they called “Phased deployment” and in the documentation

they wrote:

Phased deployments automate a coordinated, sequenced rollout of software without creating multiple deployments. In this Technical Preview version, the phased deployment wizard can be completed for task sequences in the admin console. However, deployments are not created.

Links to the ConfigMgr Technical Preview 1801 docs and info :

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/get-started/capabilities-in-technical-preview-1801

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2018/01/22/update-1801-for-configuration-manager-technical-preview-branch-available-now/

Let’s take a quick look at this and head over a task sequence and in this particualar case we will try to do a phased deployment with the “Awesome task sequence” and from there we will right-click on the TS and choose ” Create Phased deployment”

A wizard will appear were we need to specify a name and choose our pilot collection and production collection

Once we clicked “Next” we get some options to configure and they seem to be self explanatory

Criteria for success of the pilot phase Deployment success percentage – Were we can specify a critera between 0-100 %



Conditions for beginning the production phase of deployment Automatically begin this many days after the success of the pilot phase – Pick how many days after the success of the pilot phase the production deployment should start Wait for me to manually being this phase of deployment – Determine if we want to start it manually



Once the production phase begins, target all the devices within days – Choose number of days

Once the device is targeted, apply the upgrade As soon as possible Deadline time (relative to the time of the device is targeted) – Choose between hours, days, weeks, months



Click “next” and you will get an overview of the different phases

Next up is to set a failure rate where the deployments will be stopped if the failure rate is above X procent

Once done with the Wizard you will find the phased deployment under the lower statusbar.

As stated in the release docs for 1801 the phased deployment in this release doesn’t create any deployments so the feature Isnt “working” yet but I personally think its a really good Idea thats needs some fine tuning for sure but the concept Is awesome ! Can’t wait for the “updated” version of this feature so we can play around some more with it.

That’s all for now and until next time, cheers !

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