Q. What are Servicing Plans in Configuration Manager 1511 and beyond?
A. Servicing Plans work in a similar manner for Windows 10 upgrades as to how automatic deployment rules work for regular updates. Servicing plans are created for the various deployment rings within your organization with each servicing plan having settings related to the branch of Windows 10 to deploy (Current Branch vs Current Branch for Business) and any deferral of the upgrade along with collections to target with the servicing plan. These servicing plans are then used to automatically create deployments for the upgrade which are then deployed to the required collections automatically. This keeps the various rings in your organization running the correct branches of Windows 10. A dashboard is also provided showing the rollout status and the lifecycle of the various branches. In the picture below you can see in my environment I have 3 servicing plans, one for each of my deployment rings and for the general rollout ring the Current Branch for Business is used with a 90 day delay. The pilot ring gets the Current Branch for Business once it is declared with no delay while the IT Pilot group get the Current Branch. In this way features can be tested and understood before the next phase of rollout.
