Continuing from my last blog entry on checking for pending updates on the SCCM client, I will now show how you can use this information to determine if an installation is already occurring and performing an installation if nothing is happening. While I will not completely re-hash the process for gathering all of the updates, I will do a little refresher on a couple of things.

First off, we need to create that same Com object as before:

#Create the Update Object
$SCCMUpdate = New-Object -ComObject UDA.CCMUpdatesDeployment

The most important part of determining if there is an installation attempt occurring is making sure that we have a reference configured in a variable, in this case, I am using $Progress. If we receive anything other than a 0, then any attempts at an installation will fail.

<#Create the reference variable for progrss.
This is important because if the value of $progress is anything but a 0, then we cannot
proceed with the rest of the installation
#>
[ref]$progress = $Null  

Now we go through the same process of enumerating all of the updates pending on the SCCM client

#Begin enumerating through the updates: Install = 2, ShowHidden = 1, reference to progress for the overload values
$updates = $SCCMUpdate.EnumerateUpdates(2, 1, $Progress)

Note where I used the $Progress variable for the reference to store the progress data. Let’s take a look at the progress to see where it is at.

Luckily for us, it is a 0, meaning that we can proceed with the installation attempt of the updates. Here is a table showing the other possible values and their meanings.

Next, it is time to see if we actually have any updates that need to be installed.

#Find out how many updates are available for installation
$UpdateCount = $updates.GetCount()

Perfect, we have some updates to work with!

For this, I will be using the InstallUpdates() method from the UDA.CCMUpdatesDeployment object we created. But before we can attempt that, we need to create a collection of the UpdateIDs, which are required by the InstallUpdates method.

[string[]]$UpdateIDs = For ($i=0;$i -lt $UpdateCount;$i++) {
      $updates.GetUpdate($i).GetID()    
}

As you can see, we have the UpdateIds as a collection. Of course, this is not human readable by any means. Fortunately, I have a function that I can use to find out what those updates are exactly.

Get-SCCMClientUpdate -ShowHidden

Now it is time to install the updates. Note that there are 3 values which are required for this to work correctly:

1. Array of UpdateIds
2. ContentPriority
1. Possibly values for Download Priority

0	PriorityForeground
1	PriorityHigh
2	PriorityMedium
3	PriorityLow
3. Options for the installation
1. Possible Option Flags (Note that these are bit-wise flags meaning that you will need to use –BOR)

0x0001	UPDATE_CHECK_LOCATIONS
0x0002	UPDATE_FORCED_SCAN
0x0004	UPDATE_WAIT_AU_AVAILABILITY
0x0008	UPDATE_IGNORE_SERVICEWINDOW
0x0010	UPDATE_IGNORE_REBOOTWINDOW
0x0020	UPDATE_RETRY_DETECT_ON_FAILURE
0x0040	UPDATE_RAISE_MOMALERTS_ON_FAILURE
0x0080	UPDATE_DISABLE_NONSMS_MOMALERTS

A quick example of working with the Options flags.

$Options = 0x0001 -BOR 0x0002 -BOR 0x0020
$options

Now we can begin the installation.

$SCCMUpdate.InstallUpdates($UpdateIDs, 0, $Options)

Now here is my disclaimer that I am not a SCCM expert and am not really sure where you can easily monitor the installation progress. With the Windows Update Agent, the installation will hold up the console (or script) until it has completed. And once it has completed, you can work with the output to determine what installed and what failed. With the SCCM agent, I have not been able to easily track the installation progress of the updates. One place I was able to locate to see the status and result of installation is at: C:\Windows\System32\CCM\Logs\UpdatesDeployment.log.

Whether this is the best way or not is uncertain at this point. If there are SCCM experts out there who know of a better way, I am definitely open to hearing about other ways to track the installations and will update this article to mention those ways. But as you can see, installing the pending  updates with the SCCM client is yet another great thing you can do with PowerShell!