System Center Updates Publisher 2011

System Center Updates Publisher 2011 is a stand-alone tool that enables independent software vendors or line-of-business application developers to import software updates from external catalogs, create and modify software update definitions, export software updates to external catalogs, and publish software updates to a configured update server. By using Updates Publisher 2011 to manage software updates and publish them to the update server, administrators can begin detecting and deploying published updates to client and server computers when using System Center Configuration Manager and System Center Essentials.

Updates Publisher 2011 supports software updates that have dependencies, such as software update bundles. Software updates catalogs that contain these types of updates can be imported for publication to an update server and can be exported to an external catalog.

Updates Publisher 2011 enables administrators to do the following:

Import software updates from catalogs created by non-Microsoft organizations or created from within the administrator's organization.
Create applicability and deployment metadata for software updates.
Export software updates to external catalogs so that they can be imported by Updates Publisher 2011 at another location.
Manage software update information.

For more information about Updates Publisher 2011, see the following content in the Microsoft Technical Library:

System Center Updates Publisher (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83449): See the latest online Help for Updates Publisher 2011.
System Center Updates Publisher (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83534): See the resources that you can use to help evaluate, deploy, maintain, and support Updates Publisher 2011.

In This Section

The following sections provide information about the different Updates Publisher 2011 workspaces and procedures that describe how to use Updates Publisher 2011.

Configuring System Center Updates Publisher 2011: This section provides procedures for setting configuration options that define how Updates Publisher 2011 manages software updates, such as Update Server options, Configuration Manager options, trusted publisher options, proxy setting options, and more.

Managing Software Updates Catalogs: This section provides a description of the Catalogs workspace and procedures that describe how to subscribe to software updates catalogs (including partner catalogs), how to edit catalog subscriptions, and how to import software updates from catalogs into the Updates Publisher 2011 repository. After the software updates are imported into the repository, you can publish or export them to an external catalog.

Managing Software Updates: This section provides a description of the Updates workspace and procedures that describe how to create software updates and software update bundles, how to publish a software update, how to assign a software update or bundle to a publication, and more.

Managing Publications: This section provides a description of the Publications workspace and procedures that describe how to publish a publication, export a publication, and how to remove software updates from a publication.

Managing Applicability Rules: This section provides a description of the Rules workspace and procedures that describe how to create rule sets, and how to create, edit, save, and delete individual rules in a rule set.

Managing Security for System Center Updates Publisher 2011: This section provides procedures for configuring a self-signing certificate on the client computer, for configuring the certificate store on the update server, and for configuring the Group Policy to allow Windows Update Agent 3.0 on computers to scan for published updates.