For the Windows Update reboot notification scenario, keep the message short and action-oriented. Users should immediately understand whether they can postpone, whether a restart deadline exists, and which business application might be affected if they ignore the prompt.
Also check the policy assignment after deployment. If the same device receives multiple update rings or conflicting restart settings, the notification can look correct while the underlying restart behavior is still confusing for users and support teams.
This guide is about Windows Update reboot notifications in Intune and how to make restart behavior predictable for users. The important part is not only enabling a toast, but also choosing timing, wording, and assignment groups that match your patching process.
Before rolling this out broadly, test the notification on a small pilot group and compare the user experience with your existing update rings. That gives you a clean baseline for support tickets, restart deadlines, and expected device behavior after monthly patch deployment.
Windows Update reboots are one of those topics where the default behaviour annoys exactly the people you want least to annoy: knowledge workers in the middle of a presentation, factory operators on a kiosk, and your CEO on a Friday afternoon. Out of the box, Windows shows generic reboot prompts that users either dismiss without reading or only see seconds before the machine restarts. The good news is that Microsoft Intune exposes a complete set of CSP-backed settings to tame these notifications: when they appear, how often they nag, when they auto-restart, and how aggressively they enforce. This post collects the small handful of policies I deploy in every tenant for predictable reboot behaviour, with the gotchas that don’t make it into the docs.
In one of my blog posts (Delay Windows Update pending reboot with toast notification) I have already described how to give users more flexibility in deciding when to reboot their device while still reminding them regularly. In this blog I want to explain how to configure the system notification of Windows Update for business. The reason for this blog is a question in the Microsoft Tech Community.
Creation of the configuration profile
- Open the Intune admin center
- Navigate to Devices -> Windows -> Configuration profiles
- Click + Create profile
- Select Windows 10 and later platform as Platform
- Select Settings catalog (preview) as Profile type
- Click Create
- Enter a Name and click Next
- Click + Add settings
- Enter Windows Update in the search box and click Search
- Select Windows Update for Business
- Select the following settings:
- Auto Restart Notification Schedule
- Auto Restart Required Notification Dismissal
- Set Auto Restart Notification Disable
Note: The documentation for the CSP you can find the Microsoft documentation.
- Configure the settings as needed
- Click Next
- Assign the policy to a group
- Click Next
- Click Next
- Click Create
Conclusion
There are many different settings to configure Windows Update for Business. In this blog I have only shown you how to configure the notifications for reboots.
Stay healthy, Cheers
Jannik