Testing Your Edits

You run the risk of introducing errors anytime you modify an update package. For this reason, you should always test your changes by publishing a modified update to your WSUS server and then deploying it to a set of test machines. You should never deploy a modified update to your production machines until it is fully tested.

If your test deployment fails and you need to perform additional editing, select the update in the Published Third-Party Updates list and then click Edit. Make your new edits and then click Publish. If your additional edits alter only the metadata, a revision will be published but the update ID will be unchanged. If you make new or additional edits to the Custom Install Script tab, a new update will be published that supersedes the update being edited.

If you publish multiple iterations of a custom script during your development and testing cycle, it could result in a sequence of superseded updates that will never be used. You should delete the intermediate updates after publishing the final version. To do this, in the Published Third-Party Updates list, select all but the final version of the custom updates that you created and then click Delete. This will delete all your intermediate customized versions and any related deployments that you performed during the testing process.

If you want to delete all of your edits and publish the original catalog version of the update, do the following:

1. If you created any custom updates using the Custom Install Script options, select those updates in the Published Third-Party Updates list and then click Delete.
2. If you published the unedited update, select it in the Published Third-Party Updates list and then click Republish. If you never published the original update but wish to publish it now, select and publish it from the Updates list.