In case you have missed the new download here on Symantec connect [1] I'm doubling up the announcement here on my blog:

It's been a very long while since I posted a download on Connect but tonight I've got something worth sharing.

This week I needed to work on implementing automated patching for one of my customer with Workflow and this lead me to consider writing something similar to the 6.2 [2] tool we had, but for 7.1.

And it turned out to be rather trivial, compared to the code we previously had to write.

This is because the Patch Workflow API contains everything needed to handle the staging of bulletins and creation of software update policies.

So, I'm attaching a single executable file (_warning_ this is still beta code) to this download.

And here's a brief description of the tool command line options:

File name: ZeroDayPatch.exe

File path: "<altiris_install_path>\Patch Management\Core\Web\bin"

Command line switches:

• /dryrun
• /test
• /targetGuid=<targetGuid>
• /severity=<severity>

Command line descriptions:

• /dryrun can be used to get a complete output of the tool without staging or creating any policies for the desired bulletins.
• /test will run stage bulletins and create up to 10 new policies
• /targetGuid is used to specify the target used in the created policies. By default we use the "Windows computers with Patch agent plugin".
• /severity allows the user to define which severity on the bulletin should be matched

This tool was coded to be as simple and straight forward as possible. Here are some key points on what it does and doesn't do:

• It creates a policy if no policy exist (so we don't create duplicates)
• It enables the policy by default
• It does not verify whether the targetGuid provided is a valid target

Now, please let me know if this helps and if you have some feature needs or comments, post them here or contact me directly!

[1] https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/downloads/patch-automation-tool-pms-71-sp2

[2] https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/readypatch-management-solution-automation-tools-patch-management-solution-62