WSUS Product Team Blog

WSUS Admins,

(Updated 10/30/08) In the next few weeks, Microsoft Update is adding a new product family to your WSUS server – Windows Live OneCare.   These product updates for Windows Live OneCare are applicable for a future release.   For additional information on this release, please see the MU blog.

Thank you.

 Cecilia Cole | WSUS Program Manager

 WSUS Admins:

Please ensure you have synched your WSUS servers and deployed the critical security update released today, 10/23/2008 to your environments.   For more information see:  Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067.

Hi WSUS admins,

In the next couple of days, we are adding a new product family to your WSUS server -Forefront Code named Stirling -Beta.  The  Forefront Code named Stirling -Beta product family will include updates for all Forefront Code named Stirling -Beta products, including Service Packs, Optional updates, Definition updates and Critical or Security updates. For additional information on Forefront Code named Stirling -Beta Products see: http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/stirling. These updates will be available through the Microsoft Update Site, and making it available (depending on your settings) via Automatic Update, and to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). 

We recommend WSUS administrators having The  Forefront Code named Stirling -Beta deployments in their corporation; select this new product family to synchronize associated update classifications of your choice.  Additionally, The Forefront Code named Stirling -Beta updates will be available from the Microsoft Update Catalog http://catalog.update.microsoft.com.

Thank you.

WSUS Team

Hi WSUS Admins: 

Just a friendly reminder, the latest Silverlight update rollup was released today. So if you have Silverlight deployed in your environment make sure you validate and approve it to continue Silverlight’s serviceability in your managed environment. If you haven’t deployed Silverlight yet, you can sync feature packs and approve Silverlight for distribution to your managed computers.

Silverlight is a technology used by developers to provide both a browsing experience and Internet service interactions. Clients will  always need to have the latest version of Silverlight in order to access the broadest number of Web sites and services.  Clients with direct web access and administrative rights on their computer can get these updates by navigating to a Silverlight Website, but you can choose to deploy Silverlight through WSUS, ensuring that the client always has the most secure, stable, and functional version of Silverlight installed.

For more information on Silverlight click here.

Cecilia Cole

WSUS Program Manager

Hi WSUS Admins,

Just wanted to let you know in a few days you will see a new product family in your WSUS server – BizTalk Server.  The BizTalk Server product family will include updates for Host Integration Server 2000, Host Integration Server 2004, and Host Integration Server 2006.  For additional information on the BizTalk Server products see the Microsoft BizTalk Server page here.

We recommend WSUS administrators with Host Integration Server deployments in their corporation select this new product family, or the appropriate product categories,  to synchronize associated update classifications of your choice.  Additionally, updates for these categories will be available from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

Thanks,

The WSUS team

Hi WSUS Admins,

Just wanted to give you a heads up, later this month you will see the product family called "Office Communications Server" updated to “Office Communications Server & Office Communicator”.   This category will contain updates to components offered for various components of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and  Microsoft Office Communicator.

Office Communications Server 2007 and R2 manages all real-time communications including: instant messaging, VoIP, audio and video conferencing. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and R2 also powers presence, a key benefit of Microsoft unified communications that unites the contact and identity information stored in Active Directory with the ways people communicate.  Security updates can be released through this category periodically.

Office Communicator  is a unified communications client that helps people be more productive by enabling them to communicate easily with others in different locations or time zones using a range of different communication options, including instant messaging (IM), voice, and video. Integration with programs across the 2007 Microsoft Office system — including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Groove, and SharePoint Server — gives information workers many different ways to communicate with each other via a consistent and simple user experience

Due to the variety of applications/components that can reside under this product family, subscribing to this product family is recommended. We will send out additional information if anything changes.

Thanks, 

The WSUS team 

In the next few weeks, we are adding a new category to your WSUS server – Expression Media 2.  The category belongs to the Microsoft Expression product family. The category will include updates for Expression Media 2, including service packs, optional updates, and critical or security updates.   For additional information on Expression Media Products see: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=media. These updates will be available through the Microsoft Update Site, and (depending your on settings ) via Automatic Update, and to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). 

We recommend WSUS admins having Expression deployments in their corporation; select this new product category to synchronize associated update classifications of your choice.  Additionally, Expression updates will be available from the Microsoft Update Catalog http://catalog.update.microsoft.com.

Thank you,

The WSUS Team

WSUS Admins,

Just a heads up that MS08-053 (KB954156) and MS08-054: (KB954154) have been revised today.  You will see new revisions for both  in your WSUS synchronization results, and the WSUSscan.cab will be re-released as well.  For further details on the revisions,  please see the bulletins: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-053.mspx and http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-054.mspx

Thank you,

The WSUS Team

And the new categories keep on coming! There will be a new product category added to your WSUS server Products and Classifications dialog, under the Visual Studio family today September 9.  The new category will be titled Visual Studio 2008.  The Visual Studio 2008 category will allow all classifications of updates to be offered to the Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio Team System 2008 product families.

Thanks.

Cecilia Cole

WSUS Program Manager

Hello folks!

Hello folks,

The MU team has published a note on their blog regarding a new category on Windows Update and WSUS in preparation for Win 7 beta updates and drivers in the not so distant future.

Thanks!

WSUS Team.

Hello folks,

I am finally back from a long vacation, hopefully everyone is doing alright. Since there has been a lot of movement in the blog, I also wanted to bring to your attention the post that the MU folks have just added to their blog which relates to the availability of Windows Search 4. As a reminder, this update will not automatically install on WSUS clients. Windows users will either see it as an "Optional" or "Recommended" update depending on the version you are running.

Thank you.

Cecilia Cole | WSUS Program Manager

Hi all,

Anyone who added "Drivers" to their WSUS synchronization options may have noticed a large number of driver updates showing up in their WSUS server recently, and the majority of them have the same title. We wanted to let you know what's going on and what we are doing about it.

First lets talk about the root cause. Drivers can target one or more hardware IDs, and we have a limitation in our data-model so that each "update" can only support a single hardware ID. What that means is that a single driver is often implemented as multiple updates, all with the same title. What happened recently is a few drivers were released to WSUS that supported a very large number of hardware IDs.

It turns out the proper fix for this is not simple; it involves changes to WSUS, WUA, WU, and our driver publishing pipeline to allow a single driver update to support multiple hardware IDs. We have made a number of these changes already, but all this won't come online until some time after the next WSUS release. A number of folks have asked "can't you just do some quick change to the WSUS UI to group them together" and unfortunately that is an even more complex change to make (although in the WSUS 3 UI update view, we do have a "group by" feature that allows one to at least group the updates by title - but that's only a small part of update handling).

In the short term, we will be making some publishing policy changes to ensure that drivers with a large number of hardware IDs don't flow to WSUS through WSUS/MU server synch. This doesn't mean the drivers won't be available to WSUS - they can still be imported from the MU catalog site (from the WSUS 3 UI, go to the "Updates" node and select "import..."). It's just that they won't flow automatically and surprise those who have added drivers to their synch options.

-Marc Shepard

WSUS Lead Program Manager