Failed Patches
There may be times when a patch fails to install, regardless of the vendor. To cover this potential situation, there are two options for handling Failed Patches:
1. Automatically reprocess failed patches
Where enabled, Patch Management for Windows retries failed patch deployments and as a patch may fail to install multiple times, we have included the ability to determine how this is handled.
Enable Automatically reprocess failed patches and set a threshold figure for the number of times a patch is reprocessed before it is considers as failed (maximum 5).
To avoid installing patches at a time that may not be suitable to the business or user, patch reprocessing option respects the device's Installation Schedule,
For example, if patches are set to install every weekday at 10:00am and a patch fails on Monday, then the Dashboard will retry that patch each day at 10:00am until either the patch installs or the maximum number of attempts is reached. Or where patches are set to install manually, we will attempt to retry that patch each time you run a manual patch remediation until either the patch installs or the maximum number of attempts is reached.
Running a manual remediation does not count towards the Automatically reprocess failed patches count where the Installation Schedule is set to Scheduled (daily, weekly or monthly). The count figure is only incremented when the remediation takes place as part of the device's scheduled remediation.
Whilst in the reprocessing state, a patch is not reported as failed on the Dashboard.
2. Send an email when patch installation fails
As a patch installation failure may require investigation, you can opt to generate an email notification when a patch deployment reports as failed.
This option may be combined with Automatically reprocess failed patches to create a notification where the reprocess patch is reported as failed on the Dashboard
You can configure the notification's From address, Subject line and content in the Failed Patch Alert Mail Template
In addition to automatically retrying a failed patch, you can manually reprocess any patch where it is in the Failed state on the Dashboard.
Previous to PME v1.3.1, when a Patch was reported as Reboot Required - it may have indeed failed. For the fail state to show correctly, the device had to be rebooted, and then the next Patch Scan had to run and update to the N-sight RMM Dashboard.
From PME v1.3.1, the installed state of a Patch is accurately reflected following a Patch Remediation run (scheduled install attempt):
| Patch Install Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Reboot Required | Device requires a reboot to finalize the patch installation |
| Installed | Patch has been installed successfully |
| Failed | Patch installation has failed (regardless of a reboot needed or not) |