Unable to evaluate assignment as it is not activated yet

One of my colleague reported that he was unable to install Windows 10 feature update. He found “Unable to evaluate assignment as it is not activated yet” in UpdatesDeployment.log.

Be it definition updates or normal windows updates, if you deploy it correctly, you will not face this issue. The word correctly here means deploying updates with right settings. Let’s explore what assignment not activated yet means and how to avoid it.

Unable to evaluate assignment as it is not activated yet

First of all let me show you the SCCM UpdatesDeployment.log file. Notice the line Activation time has not arrived for the assignment. Next to that we see assignment is still not active, hence there is no evaluation.

Finally in the next line we see unable to evaluation assignment as it is not activated yet. So evaluation initiated for 0 assignments is what you see.

The Assignment {5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920} matches the deployment ID of the Windows 10 feature update in console.

Activation time has not arrived for assignment ({5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920}) Just remove old instances. UpdatesDeploymentAgent
 Assignment {5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920} has total CI = 1 UpdatesDeploymentAgent
 Assignment({5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920}) still not active. No need to evaluate
 Unable to evaluate assignment {5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920} as it is not activated yet
 Evaluation initiated for (0) assignments.
 Message received: 'True'

So what’s happening here is the client agent received the policy for the deployment, however the deployment start time is still in the future.

Checking the Scheduling tab of feature update deployment properties, the software available time was set to a custom one or specific time. Making the deployment available at specific time is perfectly fine. Ensure you also configure the schedule evaluation properly which is either Client Local Time or UTC.

This means any computer that tries to get this deployment even before it becomes available, you see the assignment not activated message. Precisely the line unable to evaluate assignment as it is not activated yet is logged in UpdatesDeployment.log.

If you as an IT admin have deployed the feature update as available, you must inform users about this deployment. Because only you know when the software will be available for devices. Otherwise the user is going to complain that the software update is still not available in Software Center.

Furthermore if you have set the software available time to As soon as possible, you may not encounter any such issues.

The update appears in software center once software available time criteria is met. The below lines confirm the same.

Assignment {5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920} has total CI = 1 UpdatesDeploymentAgent
Detection job ({4AE831A5-DDC1-4E33-8AC7-B35E392DC260}) started for assignment ({5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920})
Started evaluation for assignment ({5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920})
Evaluation initiated for (1) assignments.
Progress received for assignment ({5907E425-DD33-48C8-96E7-A2C9CE1FC920})