Support Remotely Changing the Publishing Service Settings from Another Device

Adding my +1 to this idea. As numerous guests have reported here, we have separate responsibilities between a small team of SCCM admins and a larger packaging/release management team. We expect the packaging team to handle tasks in the Publisher console to i.e. enable/disable updates/apps, modify commandline options, set custom scripts, etc. From a security perspective, we definitely want to limit who has admin rights on a server. And (as Bob Clarke reported) with a limited number of concurrent seats on a single Windows Server, it's hard to collaborate on a large team.

An alternative to a client-server setup would be PmP AaaS

A remote console and having multiple users in the PMPC console at the same time is my vote.

We've expanded the group of staff who can manage apps/updates through PmPC, so we are now really struggling trying to share a single instance of the settings app! Hope this one gets into development soon :)

A remote console would be very handy and its actually the 1st thing I thought of while waiting for a free session on the server its installed on.

Good Morning,

I would like to be able to access PatchMyPC Publising by multiple users at the same time.

Our environment is composed of 4 Groups totally independent and a heading group which coordinate between them. Each group has total free rights to add a new third party to the list in SCUP currently.

Thanks,

Dom

Would love to see remote Publishing app access. As others have mentioned, it's rough having to RDP into the server just to make changes, publish new apps, etc. I'm in and out of the Publishing app multiple times per day and having to RDP to a server to make a quick change and then sync is a headache.

+1

Yes would really be nice, not all of our it admins have got admin rights to the site server but have to use the publishing service.

Hello there, I agree with some of the others, whereby Admins that support the Deployment of Third Party Updates, such as a Release Management Team, are not responsible/admins of WSUS.

A Remote Console that then avoids the RDP to the server would be great. However I understand that it is likely that the PMPC user/admin will need WSUS Admins to undertake actions. So this would just be a nice to have feature

yes this would be nice

A remote console would be helpful for headless servers or servers without GUI

Hey Thomas, thanks for the feedback! We will keep this in mind when thinking about this feature.

I'd like to elaborate a little more on why a remote start of the tool is essential.

Not every company uses WSUS admins to deal with 3rd party updates, and so do we (not).

So for limited access of such tool users, it's not only important for us to start such applications from a remote (console-only) server but also that the application itself is written in such a way that it runs without local admin rights, e.g. as a power user so that besides others, UAC can be bypassed.

Our requirement is to have users use their workstation with an admin console to perform their required function. Logging onto a server is a last resort - abstracting the Publishing Settings windows to a workstation console application that connects to the site server would help solve the issue.

Ok cool! Updating the title. I've heard this feedback a few times prior to launching our ideas site. I expect this will get some traction.

A way to remotely manage the publishing service is what I'd want. :)

Hey Steven,

So are you more interested in an option to control the publishing service settings (enabled, products, right-click options, etc.) from a remote machine from where the actual publishing service is installed? When I read the title, I was initially thinking you may have wanted like a new node in the SCCM console, but I think it's more about remotely managing the settings?

Thanks for the thorough response Justin; makes complete sense.

The native catalogue in ConfigMgr was actually where we started our journey with third-party updates, but we opted for your Publisher service due to it's superior feature set, specifically around automating the catalogue download/publishing. Even given the improvements in 1906, which may appear to address some of these aspects, without pre/post update scripts to manage some of the one-click features you add to the Publisher we can't really consider it - it'd be step backwards now. 

The ability to remotely manage the Publisher service would actually be pretty useful for us.

I'm trying to get a little context here. First of all, I doubt we will add a console extension for 2 reasons.

1. If you want to use the console to add our catalog, you can use the native functionality in-console SCCM 1806 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/sum/deploy-use/third-party-software-updates (Note: it's going to be improved in 1906)

2. When we developed our publishing service https://patchmypc.com/publishing-service-setup-documentation, we intentionally choose not to use the in-console SCCM integration for a few main reasons.

   1. This always us to work outside the System Center framework

   2. We can work in environments not using SCCM (Standalone WSUS)

For this question "if it works remotely it'd be handy to avoid having to jump on the Site Server where there can be admin contention, at least where I am now.". Would having an option to change products from a remote Patch My PC Publishing Service console be helpful for you?