There are administrative activities that take place in every ConfigMgr/SCCM hierarchy that would be nice to be able to add some safety pre-checks before ConfigMgr takes off and does its thing. In the example I’m going to cover within, the scenario revolves around wanting to be notified when my ConfigMgr Automatic Deployment Rule (ADR) runs its usual scheduled download, distribution, and deployment process. I didn’t only want to know what is actually about to be deployed to my clients, but I want to know what the maximum runtimes are for each update, the start time and deadline of the deployment, some basic info about each update including a link to view more details and check for known issues, and any other interesting information you might want to include. You could opt to only be notified of the new software updates using status filter rules to run a script which sends an e-mail from within the script. I decided to leverage Microsoft Flow’s native Send Email capability to handle the notification e-mail. One great thing many don’t realize is that a free Flow plan is included with every Office 365 tenant. Once you realize all of the automation capabilities that Flow has, you’ll probably soon realize it’s worth bumping up to Flow Plan 1 so you can begin taking advantage of the Flow Gateway. Fortunately, it’s a great deal @ $15/user per month (with no limit to the number of Flows each user can create), or a per Flow plan starting at $500/month for up to 5 Flows. For more details on Flow and it’s pricing, click here. What if you want to take it to the next level, and not only be notified of the updates, but also click a link within the e-mail which allows you to review details...
Microsoft Premier Field Engineer