WSUS vs. GPO: What Policy takes Precedence?

Solution 1:

The reason for deadlines is basically as you say...however you may also want to schedule something for "today" as well as immediately.

Scenario:

-Your GPO is set to install updates only on Friday at 3am

-You set a WSUS patch as approved on Tuesday and it is critical to get it out that night, but you don't want it going out immediately, so you set the deadline as 11pm that night.

But basically what you are saying is correct...the WSUS deadline policy takes precedence.

Also, if your GPO doesn't specify to reboot, and a deadline for a policy does have a reboot, then it will reboot the computer at the deadline time regardless of when the patch was installed by GPO policies.