Powershell, Deployment Packages and Software Updates OH MY!

Question

Ok, so I snooped around and was not able to find an answer to my question so here goes.
I'm building an automated process where Orchestrator runbooks will automate the entire process of downloading updates, deploying to test groups, waiting for an approved RFC then deploying the updates. That's the 10k foot level view.
My question revolves around the process of downloading software updates and placing them into a package.  It has been suggested that the Save-CMSoftwareUpdate does this, but reviewing the doc I am less inclined to believe this statement.  Was hoping
to get lucky and have someone reply that they have done this and here are the interesting parts.
This will all be performed via powershell commands with no direct user interaction at all.  So some powershell script that pops up the download software updates wizard will not work for me.
Thanks in advance for any pearls of wisdom around this,
Jim

Answer 1

Ok, I know that we are playing 20 questions here, but I needed the first part to scope the next set of questions.
You say that the approvals are coming from an external source...are you wanting to automate the parsing of the external source or are you planning on putting the approvals into a WSUS group for it to download the update content?  Keep in mind here
that the UpdateID that I am referring to is a GUID and not something that someone is likely to give you in a human readable document.  The problem with Bulletin IDs is that they will likely apply to a number of operating systems and architectures. 
It would be nice if you could get them to populate the approvals into the computer group directly to alleviate the ambiguity.  Of course you have to remember that someone has to keep it cleaned up.
You can query WSUS for all of the UpdateIDs for a given computer group.
Beyond this, you will now need to use the WSUS APIs and may want to take a look at the IUpdate interface:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.updateservices.administration.iupdate_members(v=vs.85).aspx and call the GetInstallableItems method, which will return a list of InstallableItem:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.updateservices.administration.installableitem_members(v=vs.85).aspx each item will have an ID, which is the ID that you will need to publish into your update package; it also has a Files property, which
is a list of files for the installable item, and is of type UpdateFile:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.updateservices.administration.updatefile_members(v=vs.85).aspx.  These are the files that will get published into the update package.  Each update file will have a FileUri property, which will
provide you with a web link to download the file.  If you are a bit more enterprising, you can mangle the FileUri into a UNC path, so that you can just copy the file directly.
You should now create the update list.  In the process of creating the update list, you will want to create a table of UpdateID to CI...you will need this when you create your advertisement.
Once you have gathered all of the update content, and their associated InstallableItem identifiers, you are ready to tell configuration manager to populate the update package with the installable items.  Interesting here is that you are dealing with
the installable items and not directly with the updates.  Configuration manager will associate the InstallableItems with the appropriate updates to be shown in the interface.
Once you get the package populated, you will need to create the advertisements to the appropriate collection.  By the way, this is done on an individual update basis.  Remember that update lists, update packages and update advertisements have
no direct relationship to one another, although a stronger bond was created in 2012.
Simple stuff huh?!?
Remember that Configuration Manager will not pull metadata across for updates that are already superseded, so you may not always have a one to one reference.
Keeping your packages cleaned up, removing extraneous update content that is no longer needed, is a completely different subject.
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