How to Start Testing Feature updates in Intune

Question

I am struggling with figuring out a way to start testing feature updates in intune on a VERY small number of devices. because our existing WUFB rings have the feature update deferral period set to 365 days. I have created a separate feature update policy, but it never does anything. Microsoft support says its because the feature updates are being delayed because of the (separate) update ring being set to defer feature updates for 365 days, and they recommended that i set that to 0 days. The problem (at least how i understand it) is that if i change the update ring to 0 days, then ALL of the machines in the ring will then get an OS upgrade! i can't for the life of me figure out how i can simply target a few machines in my lab for a feature update without risking pushing an OS upgrade to every machine in the ring.
Any suggestions are appreciated. I have also attached some screenshots of the policies.

Answer 1

@jaybird283, Thanks for posting in Q&A. When we deploy a Feature updates for Windows 10 and later policy to a device, it is recommended to assign an Update rings for the configuration "Feature update deferral period (days)" to 0.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/protect/windows-10-feature-updates#limitations-for-feature-updates-for-windows-10-and-later-policy

This is because the setting "Feature update deferral period (days)" specifies the number of days for which Feature Updates are deferred. And the deferral period begins when Microsoft releases the update. That means when we set 365 days, the device can only receive the update information after 365 days when the update is release. So we need to set it as 0. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/protect/windows-update-settings#update-settings For your confusion, if we just want to test with some specific devices, we can create a test device group with only the test devices. and under policy Assignments, we can only add the test device group to make sure these policies can only be applied to these test devices.

Hope the above information can help.

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