So I’ve been playing with SCCM 2007 and the Software Update Point (SUP) again, specifically with the search folders.
The aim was to try and find a structure that was easy to follow and maintain all the updates without much fuss. I created the usual folders for Weekly and Monthly updates which works well and makes for easily finding all the new updates to be deployed
My next task was to try and quickly find any missed updates that still needed to be deployed.
Looking at the columns in the search folders, I found 3 columns of interest:
- Installed – How many machines the specific update had been installed successfully on
- Required – How many machines an update needs to be installed on (ie missing)
- Not Required – How many machines don’t require the specific update
The column of interest is “Required” as this tells us what updates are missing from machines. Now we need to create a search folder containing only these missing updates…
When you look at the search criteria dialog you will find an option for the Required column. What’s not made clear is what you can enter in the criteria, even Microsoft tell you its a simple txt string with the OR operator with this example:
1 OR 2 OR 3 OR 4 OR 5
Whilst this will work, its a little clunky and you need to enter the numbers 1 to 9 for each search folder…
What we need is a way to say – “Anything above zero…”
Well, after a lot of Googling, I found the answer – and it was so simple I didn’t think it’d actually work but it does. So what do you need to enter?
This:
[^0]
Yep it’s that simple – and it literally means - Any string that is not Zero..
