Plan for Change: Enhancements to Simplify Update Management

Originally posted by Microsoft Mar 4, 2025 Uncategorized 0 Comments

Enhancements to Windows Autopatch will remove the Global Admin requirement, allowing any tenant with a valid license to manage updates. Changes effective March 31st include expanded Autopatch group capabilities, a new client broker flow, enhanced support, and the removal of certain features. Plan for these changes in the Microsoft Intune admin center.

Based on customer feedback that Global Admin permissions hindered use of Windows Autopatch’s advanced features, we are removing this requirement to enhance the update management experience. Now, any tenant with a valid license can seamlessly access Autopatch blades, deploy and manage updates, and access support without Global Admin consent.

When will this happen:

The changes will take place on March 31st.

How will this affect your organization:

We are making it easier to find and use key update management functions. Now, any tenant with a valid Autopatch license can seamlessly access Autopatch blades—no feature activation is required by global admins.

Here is what is changing:

• Expanded Autopatch group capabilities: Autopatch groups now support Microsoft 365 Apps and Edge updates, in addition to quality, feature, and driver updates. This enhancement provides customizable deployment settings and release schedules for all update types in the Autopatch groups. Additionally, IT administrators can now select one or more update types for deployment within Autopatch groups, allowing for greater flexibility in managing update content. Administrators will now also be able to leverage four new templates that determine the Windows update installation, reboot, and notification behavior, making it even easier to manage content. For more information, see Manage Autopatch groups.
• New Windows Autopatch Client Broker flow: Gain flexibility in managing Windows Autopatch client broker. The new user experience allows you to turn on the client broker on-demand at the tenant level to determine device update readiness and collect logs for issue triaging. For more information, see Post-device registration readiness checks.
• Enhanced support and ticketing experience: Autopatch support can be accessed without feature activation. We are also introducing a self-help-based support ticket creation experience to make it easier and faster for you to find the information you need to resolve the issue you are seeing —thereby reducing the time spent searching for answers and working on support tickets. If you need further help after March 31st, see Submit a support request.
• Remove the Update ring policy extended Pause: Today the Extended Pause feature allows IT administrators to temporarily stop update deployments beyond the standard pause duration. To align better with the Pause behavior available as part of update client policies and Intune, this capability will be deprecated. Autopatch-managed Update Ring policies will now follow the same behavior as Intune, ensuring a consistent experience across the Intune admin portal.
• We are removing the Admin Contacts blade and monthly Quality update release schedule emails to simplify management overhead.

What you need to do to prepare:

Plan for these changes in the Microsoft Intune admin center and inform your team. After March 31st, you will no longer receive emails for support cases from the microsoftexperts.com domain and instead will receive them from the microsoft.com domain. If you have any questions or concerns, or need assistance, file a service request by visiting the Microsoft Intune admin center.

Message ID: MC1022248