{"id":374,"date":"2026-10-17T15:11:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T23:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rainier-it.com\/blog\/?p=374"},"modified":"2026-10-21T00:06:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T07:06:40","slug":"whats-new-in-the-rainier-it-client-portal-automatic-updates-device-pages-and-whats-coming-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rainier-it.com\/blog\/whats-new-in-the-rainier-it-client-portal-automatic-updates-device-pages-and-whats-coming-next\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s New in the Rainier IT Client Portal: Automatic Updates, Device Pages, and What’s Coming Next"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You shouldn’t have to email your IT provider to find out whether last week’s updates installed, which laptop is which, or where your ticket stands. That should be one click away.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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The Client Portal<\/a> is where our clients see their computers, tickets, invoices and shared files. This fall it got its biggest round of changes since launch. The headline feature is automatic weekly updates<\/strong>: you pick a time, and Windows and app updates install themselves, with a reminder the day before and a summary afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post covers what’s new, how the update scheduling works behind the scenes, and what’s coming next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83d\udd04 Automatic weekly updates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Missed updates are one of the most common ways small offices get breached. They usually don’t fail loudly. A laptop that was asleep on update night, a restart nobody clicked, or a policy that quietly stopped running can all leave a machine weeks behind without anyone noticing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new Updates<\/strong> page puts the schedule in the client’s hands and the bookkeeping in ours:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • You choose the window.<\/strong> Pick a day, a time (during the workday or after hours) and your time zone. The status shows “Saving to our patching system\u2026” and turns Active<\/strong> within about five minutes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • You choose how restarts work.<\/strong> Restart automatically with a 15-minute warning, never restart during the day, or let staff postpone.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Waiting periods.<\/strong> Windows updates wait 5 days and app updates wait 2, so a bad patch has time to surface before it reaches you.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Machines that were off catch up.<\/strong> A computer that was off at update time picks up its updates the next time it’s turned on, for up to 6 days.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • No surprises.<\/strong> We email a reminder the day before (what’s being installed and anything staff need to do) and a short summary after each run. On update day, the Overview page shows a banner too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Big Windows version upgrades and hardware drivers are not automatic. We schedule those with you, because they’re the updates most likely to need someone in the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How it works behind the scenes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The portal stores each client’s choices as a simple policy. A small service we call patch-watch<\/strong> runs every five minutes on our monitoring server. It turns each policy into a schedule in our patching platform, sends the reminder and results emails, and watches each run as it happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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