The Plan phase

In this initial phase, your objective is to evaluate deployment readiness. You’ll do so by determining readiness and identifying gaps across your entire environment:

• Operations
• Applications
• Infrastructure
• Configurations
• Devices
• Users

Let’s look at each of these areas one by one, outlining the tasks and deliverables that will help you accomplish the objective of this phase. For each deliverable, consider a format that's easy to share with others and collaboratively edit throughout the life of the project.

Phased or ring-based approach to deploying Windows

Throughout this module, we’ll be referring to deployment rings and various project phases. It’s common for some of the terms to be used interchangeably. For the purposes of this module, we’re adopting the following terminology for different phases of a deployment project:

• Proof of Concept (PoC). This is an optional phase you’d often perform in a lab environment. It’s most helpful at the earliest stages of the project to test out basic functionality and assumptions. Sometimes, it’s also called a Limited Pilot.
• Pilot. This is the first phase you’d perform in the production environment. Use it to test out the wider infrastructure, connectivity, and application compatibility.
• Broad deployment. This represents one or more further deployment phases in the production environment, known as rings. In Windows Autopatch, these are referred to as first, fast, and broad rings, eventually targeting the majority of the estate.

Helpful reports across the deployment phases

Windows diagnostic data provides the information for Windows update compatibility reports, so it’s not necessary to install agents. You can use Microsoft Intune or Microsoft Configuration Manager (as appropriate) to deploy diagnostic data settings to the clients you want to report on.

Suggested reports

Prerequisites for report use