Deployment Templates are among the best innovations in Configuration Manager, because it allows a group of deployment settings to be stored and reused, thus eliminating one common source of problems.
Deployment templates can be created by themselves or the settings used in a new deployment can be saved as a template. The steps involved are identical. These steps are documented in the
Creating Deployments page, and will not be repeated here.
The settings included in a deployment template are:
- Collection
- Allow or suppress notification on clients
- Base schedule on client local time or Greenwich Mean Time
- Default maximum postponement (can be overridden in a deployment)
- Restarts allowed or suppressed, separately for workstations and servers
- Allow restart outside of maintenance window (can be overridden in a deployment)
- Creating or suppression of MOM alerts
- Whether client should download and install updates on slow and unreliable networks, and from unprotected DPs
Separate templates are needed for any variations on settings that can not be overridden in a deployment.