Receive ArcGIS patch notifications in the Esri Support App

[#1]

As a manager of an ArcGIS deployment, you play a crucial role in keeping your installed software up-to-date with the latest patches. Depending on the size of your GIS or organization, this task may be challenging, but it's essential for the smooth operation of your system. 

The easiest way to stay informed is through the Esri Support app - support.esri.com/en-us/app. In this app, you can use the Patches tab to see the latest releases. 

If you want to be notified of new patches, be sure to enable notifications from the Esri Support app on your mobile device so you stay updated with the information for your ArcGIS deployment.

[john1010]

I've applied this technique at support.esri.com. and it worked for me and solved many problems

[JoshuaWatson3]

Any chance you could update this for the new Support page, as the new page makes it almost impossible to find latest patches for specific versions. 

[ChristianWells]

@JoshuaWatson3 I'm looking into this with the web team and will get back to you. 

In the meantime, here is a good starting point to search based on products and patches: https://support.esri.com/en-us/search?cardtype=patches+and+updates

[ChristianWells]

@AndrewMunn I wrote this doc when the old site was still around. 

Can you provide an update and timeline of when the website will have this feature re-added?

[AndrewMunn]

Our support site team understands that subscribing to products to get notified about support updates is an important feature for many customers.  Our previous site had problems with the subscription functionality.  We are evaluating better methods for providing subscriptions.  At this point, we do not have a timeline for when this will be available.

[PaulHoefflerGISS]

I had problems with the previous subscription functionality, but sad to see that it's been replaced with nothing. Inconsistent emails were better than no notifications. This functionality isn't supported in the new My Esri site, either, where ArcGIS Pro patches are released.

If you understand that this is an important feature for many customers, as stated in the original post by @ChristianWells and then in the comments by @AndrewMunn, why was it removed with no timeline for reinstatement and with no alternatives? Do you have any alternatives, after laying out the importance of this now-defunct feature?

Thanks!

[PaulHoefflerGISS]

Hi @StandardSupport, 

Thanks for your response. I don't know that I was aware of push notifications for patches and KB articles in the support mobile app - is there a blog post or other info advertising that? Unfortunately, that mobile app does not appear to be approved for installation at my organization, or our parent organization. I did come across an ArcGIS Companion app, which I'm also not familiar with.

Is this logged as an issue with Technical Support or Customer Service, or shall we stay tuned to the Community forums to track any progress on web-based notifications, if they are reinstated?

Thanks.

[AndrewMunn]

Hi @PaulHoefflerGISS ,

I accidently posted from a testing account, so I am posting again from my official Esri account.

Thanks for your feedback.  We have notifications for patches and knowledge base articles available through the support mobile app.  We thought that functionality would be sufficient while we developed new notification functionality on the support site.  The new site notification functionality is taking longer than we anticipated.  I apologize for the situation, and we will hopefully have more updates soon. Thanks.

[FRAP_TiffanyMeyer]

As our organization license manager, I very much understand the value of keeping your installed software up-to-date with the latest patches!  I am requesting that you please make it a priority to put the patches and software release notification back in place.  And notify us when it's available!  Thank you!!!

[VanessaPocock]

I agree with the @FRAP_TiffanyMeyer. The subscription feature is very important. I'm hopeful this will be brought back for patch notification emails, etc. 

[Bud]

Any updates on patch notifications?

[ScottTometich1]

This is a necessary function for securing our environment.  Can we please get some kind of subscription-based notifications in place; especially for high-priority messages? 

We don't even get emails to the account owners about high-priority issues that could negatively impact customer's environments like the recent one about defective patching for ArcGIS Portal.  There might be banners on websites, but seriously ESRI, you can do better.  Look at what your customers are licensed for and at least send messages directly to them if there's an issue.  We shouldn't have to find out through the grapevine.

@AndrewMunn 

[GelcysWilliams]

Users are not local administrators on their pcs in my organization.  We need to request IT to install updates, so we need a way for the IT department to be notified when there is an update to install, or so that I can forward the update message again.  Functionality via an App might be a nice extra convenience, but should never replace email/website notifications.  Please bring the SUBSCRIBE option back to the website.  Thanks!

[pyoungberg]

Is there any update on this email update functionality? At the very least, give us an RSS feed for all the updates you're releasing. Getting email updates whenever releases happen is very basic functionality I've seen from every other software provider I've worked with. Please bring this back as soon as you can.

[ScottTometich1]

Any updates on getting some patch notification subscriptions set up again?

[ChristianWells]

@ScottTometich1, @pyoungberg While this may not be a complete or ideal solution, another tool that may help is the Patch Notification Utility in ArcGIS Enterprise. Since this file can be executed via the command line (Windows) or console (Linux), you could schedule it to run daily to notify you or your admins of the available patches.

I also contacted the team responsible for the Support website for an update. @AndrewMunn 

[CalvinHarmin]

I'd like to offer my unsolicited opinion that the ESRI Support app looks clean but in reality the functionality is absolutely trash... from my perspective. I'm feelin' spicy about it...

• I have no options for what notification types to get. I get 5 to 15 notifications a day and very rarely is it relevant to me. 
• I have no options for search or filter.
• Most importantly, the patch tab is only showing a handful of recently release patches, most of which have no relevance to me or my Enterprise build, and it's not even showing that there was a security patch from a few months ago (which I missed until this week because... guess what... you all have effectively have no security patch notification system). 

I hope I am wrong and embarrassed by someone correcting me, but this feels like you all are ignoring very serious concerns about getting security updates as fast as possible in this day and age.

Please do not suggest that we automatically patch servers with no monitoring. However, if you can explain the command line tools available with patchnotification to 'flag' that an update is available so that I can write myself a little script to send myself an email -- without automatically installing a patch -- that would be useful. 

[GelcysWilliams]

I completely agree. I've hidden the app notifications because they were constant. I will turn them back on when I have a new case.
I will add that it is ridiculous that the only place to get these notifications is on a mobile device; I don't have a work-provided cel phone, so I've got this work application loaded onto my personal phone sending me irrelevant notifications constantly. I love geography, but don't need to think about my work all the time, thanks!

[AndrewMunn]

@CalvinHarmin @GelcysWilliams 

Thank you for your feedback!

We send notifications through the app to keep our users informed about potentially relevant content. While some notifications might not be immediately relevant, they are also intended to prepare users for future issues.

However, we recognize that we are currently sending more notifications than we originally planned, which can be overwhelming for some users. We are actively working on ways to combine, limit, and better target notifications to ensure users aren't flooded with content.

[GelcysWilliams]

Can I please receive notifications in email, so I do not have to use my personal device to access work related notifications?

[AndreaB_]

Email notifications please! Thanks.

[Bud]

Yes, email notifications are a must have.

[ScottTometich1]

App notifications should really only be used to push out enhancement notices.  Anything of an urgent nature concerning security or functionality issues should be send via email to the appropriate client account managers.  ESRI has had subscription hubs in the past where you could go in and manage which notifications you want to receive across the entire ESRI ecosystem.  It was such an easy way to see every possible subscription you could ever want to get notifications about.  What happened to that?

[mdun]

Up! email notifications based on Enterprise build are vital.

[JordanCarmona]

Subscribing to new patch alerts via the MyEsri site would be much appreciated. I saw that a new patch was released about a week ago only because I was browsing the ArcGIS blog site. I would really love having a priority email sent.

[CalvinHarmin]

@JordanCarmona I still agree and I'll stay it again since ESRI still hasn't provided a satisfactory response on this issue. 

The best I got was a suggestion to write custom command line scripts to parse the update tool's -c text output. 

The -i flag is for installing and is an optional argument as the referenced documentation mentions. If you only intend to check for available patches you would not specify that flag. The -c flag is for running the tool in console mode to write output to the terminal. You would need to parse the output with a Batch or PowerShell script then subsequently send an email based on the logic you desire.

The other flag of note is -o and has a default value of 'never', meaning it would never delete installed patches after they were downloaded and applied to the machine. You could also provide 'always' to clean up afterwards and conserve disk space.

I feel like the need to write custom code to parse the unstructured text response from the command line tool for each Enterprise machine is a needlessly complicated burden that ESRI is putting on the user to create and maintain, when just signing up for email notifications seems like such an obvious and normal solution to reach end users for security (and other) patches. This is surely not reinventing the wheel. ESRI previously had email blasts going out based on check-boxes about what ESRI components you are interest in, in order to receive updates via email (https://go.esri.com/emailPreference[...]). I don't think this URL works anymore. That may have been a recent change. Here's what it used to look like last year. 

If users writing custom code is the only sure-fire solution that ESRI can offer (the mobile app is definitely not a proper solution), then we might as well write code that directly checks the whole structured .json for changes for all of our desired components at once. Why doesn't ESRI just write a simple tool that does that and provide it to everyone? Are these decisions just geared to forcefully funnel people to the app, despite all of its known limitations? 

[MatthewProctor-Brown]

Email subscriptions are still a must.

Case in point: the 2025 Portal Security update article fails to load in the mobile app.

[c_meise]

Please make Email subscriptions possible!

[ATFerguson]

@ChristianWells @AndrewMunn 

Any update on the concerns being discussed in this thread? It's been 8 months since a response from Esri here.

[monmonberry]

We need a way to be notified of patch releases, please! 

The most recent patch was for a vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.8 a critical severity issue. Emails when patches are released would be great.

[AndreaB_]

Hi all,

I stumbled upon the latest Portal for ArcGIS security 2025 Update Patch 1 about a week after it was released - a real win that I found it that early! 😒 I think I was subscribed to a Community page where a blog was written about it - thank you for that!

But the great news is that I was reminded that there is an RSS feed on https://trust.arcgis.com/en/ and they post all of the security updates and patches. Are these all of the patches and everything we want to be notified of or just the security ones? I'm not sure but at least it's the security ones.

So I add the RSS feed to my Outlook and then I get 'emails' about patches!!! 

Hope this helps others,

Andrea

[monmonberry]

Thanks so much for your post Andrea! 🙂 I've added the RSS feed to my emails so we don't get caught out again. 

We are interested in all patch release notifications. Then we can decide if/when we need to take action. Most important is the high security vulnerability notifications though.

[GelcysWilliams]

@AndreaB @& @monmonberry that's great news about the rss feed... maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, but I'm looking on https://trust.arcgis.com/en/, and can't find the RSS feed, can you share the xml link to add to outlook?

Thanks!!

[AndreaB_]

Awesome, you're welcome! Yup, @GelcysWilliams here's a screenshot of the page with RSS circled. 

The link is: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/feed/atom/?post_type=blog&product=trust-arcgis 

[VanessaPocock]

Great find @AndreaB_ !!

[AnaAlisaputri]

Thank you @AndreaB_ , this really helped me out!

[DiegoMeira]

Unfortunately, the solution using the RSS feed doesn't work for me. I also don't have a company-issued mobile device to install the notification app, and I prefer not to use my personal device for work-related tasks.

A more professional solution would be for Esri to provide support for subscribing to product notifications, so users can receive updates about new patches and improvements.

It's strange that I can subscribe to this forum, but it's not possible to subscribe to product notifications directly. This seems like an essential feature, especially for users who rely on timely updates for critical patches and enhancements.

Are there any updates on this?

Thank you.

[ScottTometich1]

Thank you @AndreaB_ for sharing the RSS.  This is great!

Agree with @DiegoMeira that this subscription is not a full solution, but only a workaround that fills a gap.

Esri used to have a subscriptions page where you could manage all at once.  Let's get back to that.