I've recently set up SCCM 2012 R2 in our environment and I'm having some trouble getting a handle on when updates are being deployed to different groups.  What I would *like* to do is have the system generate a report (or at least an alert) and email me whenever updates are being pushed out.  I can't believe that in a system as comprehensive as SCCM there is no capability for this, but I just can't seem to find it anywhere.  

Internet searching has produced lots of guides showing how to enable alerts in general (already done) and how to get alerts when deployments fall below a certain percentage of success.  But at this point I really just need to get to know exactly what is happening in my environment and when, so I'd love to get tons of alerts if possible as things are happening.

Apologies if this question has been asked already.  I wasn't able to find it anywhere in these forums.

If your question is to a an alert when you deploy new software updates, than the answer is that it's not possible out-of-the-box. Of course you should be able to create something via PowerShell.

If that's the case, then what is the generally accepted method of keeping track of what updates are deployed via ADR's?  For example user X calls up reporting that his laptop is requesting a reboot after updates have been installed.  This is currently my only notification that SCCM has pushed out updates.  It would be preferable if perhaps a report was generated when an update group was updated and the system began deploying them to clients.

Alternatively, is there a report of some kind that would show the last updates added to a Software Update Group?  If so perhaps I could schedule that report to run on a regular basis.  That would at least give me a bit of a head's up that updates are going out to clients.

To be honest there is only one method to really control the patches that are deployed and that's by not using an ADR to deploy them. Especially for a production environment I would not use an ADR to deploy the patches, but do it manually. That's the only method to really control the patches and that's also the most used method to deploy patches in a production environment.

if you are using ADR will suggest to configure it to create new Software Update Group each time rule is ran & to keep deployment in disable state so you can review updates added in the group & remove any update if needed. then schedule deployment time as per requirement & finally enable the deployment.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that method and see if it will work for us.  Appreciate the suggestion.

Thanks Peter, that's the information I was looking for.  Manually deploying the patches once or twice a month should not be too time consuming.