With the release of ConfigMgr 1511 in December of 2015, many new features geared toward Windows 10 were added. There are various new compliance options, servicing options, and upgrade options available. This post will detail a few of those.
Edition Upgrade
A new feature added is the ability to upgrade editions of Windows 10. This means that with a simple policy, administrators can upgrade machines from Windows 10 Professional to Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education. This policy then gets deployed to machines where it checks and upgrades SKU’s to a higher version.
To create an edition upgrade policy, go to the Assets and Compliance section of your console. Expand the “Compliance Settings” folder, select “Windows 10 Edition Upgrade”, then click “Create Edition Upgrade Policy”. You will get a one-page wizard that looks like this:
Simply name your policy, select the SKU, and input either a product key or license file. After you have created your policy, you deploy it to a collection just like anything else.
Servicing Plans
Next, Servicing Plans assign Windows 10 machines to current branch or current branch for business.
Servicing Plans are defined under the Software Library node of the console. To create one, go to Windows 10 Servicing, then select Servicing Plans. Walk through the wizard and set options based on company policy. This is the most important page:
Here, you specify the ring and number of days before deployment. The days are the days after Microsoft released the upgrade, so if Microsoft releases an upgrade on January 15, it will become available for your users x number days after that date.
Be sure to check the blog for future posts about upgrade task sequences and a deep dive into servicing plans.
