One thing you will notice if you are deploying Cloud PCs is that the Enrollment Status Page (ESP) from Windows Autopilot will or might appear when a machine is being set up. I’ve seen numerous instances where the ESP has failed causing the Cloud PC to lock out the user at the initial start. This is usually fixed by reprovisioning, but an unnecessary call to the service desk can cause frustration with your users and your administrators.
The ESP is not an important part of the Windows 365 provisioning in most cases, hence it can be disabled by a custom policy.
Create the policy
To create a custom configuration policy, go to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center (endpoint.microsoft.com) and navigate to Devices > Windows > Configurations Profiles.
Select to create a new profile and select Custom as template.
Give your profile a name based on your naming convention and press Next.
Select to target All devices but filtered to only target Windows 365 devices. You can read more about how to do that in this blog post about filters.
Finish the wizard by clicking Next until you reach the last step, then click Create.
You have now successfully created a configuration profile that will skip the ESP for all your Cloud PCs.
Summary
The ESP is something that in Windows Autopilot is very useful, but for Windows 365 it’s not crucial. This will also reduce the risk of random errors during provisioning.
Applications that are needed before the user starts working can be assigned using the assignments to “All Devices” and filter out your Cloud PCs since this will evaluate a lot faster than Azure AD groups.
As all swedes, summer means well-deserved summer vacation for me. For me personally, this means that I almost completely check out from work stuff for a few weeks.
So playing catch-up with what happened during the summer is always fun! I will cover some of this news in an upcoming post, but I thought I would gather all this for you in one place to start with!
I’ve gathered some of the highlights I’ve found during the summer.
Have I become an MVP!?
So this is kind of a big deal for me, and something I’ve been working towards for a while. I’ve been awarded the MVP titles within Windows and Devices for IT, and I am part of the Windows 365 MVP team!
I’m very happy, honored, and excited to get this award since it’s been something that has been my long-term goal for a while. So this is huge for me personally!
This was something that was announced as a preview this spring and went to general availability during the summer. Windows Autopatch is a way to have Microsoft take care of patching and servicing, making sure your devices are always up to date! I will write a blog post about this in the upcoming weeks, but until then you can read more about it here: What is Windows Autopatch? – Windows Deployment | Microsoft Docs
Ignite is back on and as a hybrid event!
Microsoft announced during the summer that they will host Ignite again where you can attend IN PERSON, but also remotely if you prefer. For me personally, attending Ignite remotely is always a challenge since it’s hard to take the needed time to dedicate to attendance due to your everyday commitments. So being able to attend in person again is great!
Ignite will be hosted in Seattle in mid-October and you can read more about it here (and sign up to get updates): Your home for Microsoft Ignite
Windows 365 updates
During the summer there have been some neat small updates to the Windows 365 service as well.
Some of the new features introduced are:
Support for virtualization-based workloads
Secure boot on Cloud PCs
Resize Azure AD joined Cloud PCs
Transfer files using windows365.microsoft.com and the web client
I will dig into some of these in upcoming blog posts!
Detect and manage hardware changes on Windows Autopilot devices
One thing that has been troublesome when using Windows Autopilot is how to manage hardware changes. Microsoft have now introduced support for this in the admin center.
Windows Information Protections (WIP) being depricated
With Windows 10, Microsoft introduced Windows Information Protection, WIP, which was formally known as Enterprise Data Protection (EDP). Now WIP is being sunset and transitioned over to Microsoft Purview over time. According to the blog post below things will move gradually over to Microsoft Purview. You can get started today with a free trial. If you are using E3 licenses, there will be an additional license needed but with E5s it is included.
“Beginning with Windows 10, version 21H2, feature updates for Windows 10 release are released annually, in the second half of the calendar year, to the General Availability Channel. They will be serviced with monthly quality updates for 18 or 30 months from the date of the release, depending on the lifecycle policy.” – Windows 10 – release information | Microsoft Docs
News in Microsoft Endpoint Manager
There have been a lot of updates around macOS and Settings Catalog this summer, but also a few updates around Android, iOS, and Windows.
This is a well hidden gem in Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM). Filters. I’m not to sure that all of you knows what this is. Maybe you have seen it when setting the assignments for a profile.
Or when going to Tenant Administration.
But what are filters?
Filters in Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Filters in MEM is a way to assign profiles, applications and much more in MEM using the built in “All users”/”All devices” groups or a larger target group, and then filtering out based on specific conditions. You create the filters and set the conditions for the filters.
Filters basically singles out users or devices from a larger group of devices, just like filter does. You can re-use the same filter on different assignment groups and get different result for your policy.
The benefits with using filters instead of several dynamic groups is that the filters are evaluated instantly, which makes applying things with them a lot faster then having a dynamic group needing to process which members it should have.
One example could be that you want to be able to single out only Windows 11 computers to apply a specific policy just to them.
Creating a filter
To use a filter, you must first define the conditions of it by going to the MEM admin center (https://endpoint.microsoft.com) and navigate to Tenant administration > Filters.
To create a new filter, press “+ Create” and give your filter a name and select what platform to target. In this example, we will create a filter which will filter out Windows 365 Cloud PCs running Windows 11.
In the next step, you will need to create the conditions for your rule. Since I want to create a filter to single out Windows 365 Cloud PCs running Windows 11, I will add conditions for this by stating that osVersion should start with 10.0.22 (which is the easiest way to identify Windows 11), and that the manufacturer equals Microsoft Corporation, and that model name starts with Cloud PC.
You can also write your own syntax instead of using the built in values.
The easiest way to find the information for your filters is to go to Devices > Windows > Windows devices and search for a device which meets the requirements for your filter. Click the device and select Hardware in the menu, that will show you the information you need.
Once you have configured your rule, you can click the “Preview devices” at the bottom of the filter configuration to validate that your filter is doing what you wanted.
For this filter, I want to be able to select the Cloud PCs running Windows 11, which you can see here that it was able to find.
When you are happy with your filter configuration, click next followed by create.
Using a filter
You can use filters in a lot of different places in MEM. To see what’s currently supported to use filer, have a look at Microsoft Docs. New applications of filters are added constantly.
As of now, I want to deploy and app to only my Cloud PC running Windows 11. I want to make this application available for all my users, but only if they are using a Cloud PC running Windows 11.
The first thing I do, is to add the built in “All users” group to the “Available for enrolled devices” segment under Assignments for the application.
Next, I click on the blue text “None” under Filter mode. To use your filter, you first need to select how you want the filter to behave. You have 3 options.
Do not apply a filter
Include filtered devices in assignment
Exclude filtered devices in assignment
In this case, I want to include my Cloud PCs running Windows 11, so I select the include option. Next step is to select the newly created filter called “Cloud PC Windows 11”. Once I have selected the filter, I press “Select” at the bottom of the screen.
You will now notice that the filter has been applied to our assignment.
Now only my Cloud PCs running Windows 11 will be able to install the application.
Summary
Filters are a great addition to MEM and doing assignments, since you can target on a wider group and select just a few devices from that group. You could also make sure that only certain things gets applied to a users device which fulfills your requirements. One such scenario could be that you wish to enforce installation on a users device if the ownership is set to “Corporate” but make it available if ownership is set to “Personal”. There are a lot of different scenarios where this could be super handy!
The best thing is however that applying things using the built in “All devices” and “All users” group are usually a lot faster, and you don’t end up in a scenario where the user or device was not added to the group for a mandatory application. You can then filter out only specific devices from that larger group.
Windows Autopilot is a really nice thing, I think you all are familiar with this by now. But the process to add devices, and adding devices without being an administrator, isn’t really that straightforward with exporting CSV’s and such. The way I usually import the hardware IDs is by using the Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo.ps1 PowerShell script.
The built-in roles in Microsoft Endpoint Manager do not give you rights to add or remove devices, you need to create a custom role for this.
There are two options here, you could either duplicate an existing role such as the Help Desk Operator role and add the Enrollment Programs rights which you will need, or you can create a new custom role.
Creating a custom role for this could be very useful if you want to provide the possibility for your e.g. deskside support personal or a hardware coordinator to upload hardware IDs if this was not done by your hardware vendor.
In this example, I’ve created a new role called “Windows Autopilot Operator”.
Create a new role
Head to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager portal and navigate to Tenant Administration > Roles and click “+ Create” (or mark the role you want to duplicate and click the duplicate button).
Give your new role a name such as “Windows Autopilot Operator”.
Click next and find the heading “Enrollment programs” and enable:
Sync device
Delete device
Create device
Read device
Click through the wizard and create the new role.
We now need to assign this to a group of users. When the role is created, click on the role and go to Assignments.
Click “+ Assign” and give your assignment a name, such as Deskside Support or something describing what kind of users will be in this assignment.
Click next and add a group containing your users.
On “Scope groups”, add all users and all devices.
Complete the wizard and you have now created an assignment. If you wish to add more assignments, you can just click the “+ Assign” button again and repeat the steps.
Importing the hardware ID
We can now get started with importing the hardware ID into our tenant! You can do this either from the Out of Box Experiance (OOBE) process or in runtime. Since I think we all know how it works in run time, let’s have a look at what it looks like during OOBE.
In this example I’m using a virtual machine, but you need to have passed the Wi-Fi selection part if you are doing this on Wi-Fi since we need internet connectivity.
During the OOBE process, press SHIFT + F10 (don’t forget FN if you have such keyboard). Type powershell and hit enter.
You have now launched PowerShell in your terminal, and we can get going with executing the following three lines. You will during the have to confirm that you want to install the script, just press “y” and enter when asked to.
Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
Install-Script -Name Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo
Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo.ps1 -online
When you run the third line of PowerShell code, you will be prompted to sign in with you account. If this is the first time you are running the online version, you will need to consent the sign in first (it will show up on the screen).
Once signed in, the process will start and the Hardware ID will be harvested and uploaded to your tenant.
This process usually takes a few minutes. Once completed, turn off the computer.
If you have a look in your Windows Autopilot devices list in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager by going to Devices > Windows > Windows Enrollment > Devices you can see that the devices has been uploaded.
Depending on how you are assigning deployment profiles, this will usually be assigned within 15 minutes. Once the profile has been assigned, you can start the computer again and enroll it!
Bonus tip
If you are using group tags to assign profiles like I do in my lab, you can actually do this while running the script by adding “-GroupTag ‘[YourTag]’” at the end of the script.
This will automatically add the group tag to the device entry, and if your automated profiles assignment is depending on this everything will happen automatically!
One question I get a lot from people that are fairly new to Microsoft Endpoint Manager is “which function should I use to reset a Windows device?” and what the different buttons actually do.
So here is a little cheat sheet what the different type of reset of a Windows device does. Some also applies for other platforms, which I will mention below.
One thing you will notice when clicking these options in the portal, you will always have to confirm your selection.
Retire
This is the first option you will glance at when looking at the remote actions available in the ribbon.
Retire is not a Windows unique feature and is maybe mostly used in a BYOD scenario, but could be applicable for some corporate scenarios as well.
Retire means that you will remove the connection to Microsoft Endpoint Manager and at the same time remove all data YOU put there through MEM, such as apps, profiles, policies etc. You could basically call this an “unenrollment” of the device.
A usefull scenario would be when a user is leaving the comapny and is keeping their iPhone which has been been enrolled through a more BYOD scenario. You will only remove corporate data, but leave all the users personal data.
This feature is maybe not that commonly used for Windows since these devices would typically be “locked” to the tenant using Autopilot. But for BYOD scenarios, this could be applicable.
Wipe
Wipe is just what it sounds like. You will wipe all data from the device and put it back to factory defaults. This feature can be used on other platforms too. This is the feature I most frequently use, especially when testing things and needing to enroll things. This is equal to doing a factory reset from within the operating system. This is perfect for when a device is being decomissioned.
For Windows you get a few more options when triggering the option:
Wipe device, but keep enrollment state and associated user
Wipe decice and continue wipe even if device loses power
Typically, you dont need to select any of these but there are some cases where it could be usefull.
The wipe will also remove the device from Microsoft Endpoint Manager, IF not the first option is selected. The Azure AD object will remain and also the Windows Autopilot object, if you are using Windows Autopilot.
The “Wipe device, but keep enrollment state and associated user” will reset wipes all policies, but keeps user accounts and data, but not user files. It will reset user settings back to default. and resets the operating system to its default state and settings. This basically means that the device will be put back into the same state it was when it was first enrolled. If you are using Autopilot, use Autopilot reset instead.
The “Wipe decice and continue wipe even if device loses power” means that the device will continue to try to wipe untill its successfull. This is great for instance if the device is lost and you really want to make sure that the device is wiped for corporate data. This could in worse case leave the device unbootable if something happens. So use it with causion!
Delete
The delete option is exactly what it sounds like, you will delete the device form Microsoft Endpoint Manager. However, this will only remove the link and all data on the device will remain. However, the next time the device connects to Microsoft Endpoint Manager, corporate data will be removed.
This is mostly usefull when cleaning up any stale objects. Cleaning up stale object could with ease however we automated by using the automated clean-up rules in Microsoft Endpoint Manager found in Devices > Device clean-up rules.
Fresh start
Fresh start is a farily unknown feature in Windows which was introduced back in 2017.
What fresh start does is to remove any pre-installed software by the manufacturer (OEM) which is usally there. The computer will then run a more “Vanilla” version of Windows after the Fresh start.
When triggering this reset, there is an option to retain the user data, including enrollment, which would have little to no impact for the user. If this option is not selected, the device will be reseted and start up on the OOBE screen.
This could be usefull for cleaning out devices which has been delivered with an OEM image instead of a pure Windows image, or if the device is not purchased through your regular channels and getting the “wrong” image which includes pre-installed software.
Autopilot reset
Last out is the Autopilot reset, which is a really useful option if you are repurposing a computer from one user to another.
What Autopilot reset does is that it will restore the device back to a business ready state, meaning that all personal data is removed but all corporate settings are re-applied. All management information about the device is kept and so is the Azure AD object with all its device group memeberships. Doing this will also remove the primary user associated with the device.
When the device is handed to a new user, all they need to do is to sign in and the computer will finilize the setup for them. Users will not be able to use the device until the user enrollment parts are finilized, just like with any other Autopilot enrolled device.
Update: Got this pointed out to me by several people so I thought I would add this here as well. Autopilot Reset is NOT supported on Hybrid Azure AD Joined devices.
Key take aways
I hope this brings some clarity to the different remote actions and that you can figure out which to use when.
The ones I most commonly use are:
Wipe when testing things in my lab or completly changing what the device is used for, e.g. assigning a different Deployment Profile to the device.
Delete when I for some reason have ghost/stale objects
Autopilot reset when a device is being repurposed or changing user
The other ones are ofcourse useful, but maybe not something I frequently use.
HoloLens got to be one of the cooler devices out there, but probably also one of the lesser-known devices how to manage.
What is a HoloLens really?
HoloLens is Microsoft’s device aimed for Mixed Reality, but at heart, it’s actually a Windows-based device but done in a more modern way. This means that the support for legacy protocols is limited, but also that the level of built-in security is maybe a bit higher than on your Windows-based PC. You can read more about the HoloLens as a platform here.
Given that it’s a Windows device, we can manage it using basically the same policies in Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM) as you would for the rest of your Windows devices. A lot of baseline profiles could be re-used (or duplicated) with ease which simplifies the configuration a bit.
There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to Microsoft HoloLens 2, which has had an impact on the designs and implementations in my experience.
It doesn’t support EPP/EDR software of any kind
You can only run UWP based applications
You will need additional licenses to run e.g. Remote Assistance
HoloLens 2 as a kiosk
There are a lot of different applications and ways to implement and use a HoloLens 2. In this post, I’ll focus on how to set up the HoloLens 2 as a multi-app kiosk, but with user sign-in, using Microsoft Endpoint Manager.
Importing the device into Windows Autopilot
If your vendor or retailer didn’t import the HoloLens hardware ID for you, you can do this by following these four simple steps:
While the HoloLens 2 device is powered on, press and release the Power and Volume down buttons together to trigger the hardware ID and diagnostic log collection process.
Connect the HoloLens 2 device to a PC using a USB cable so that it shows up in File Explorer.
Browse to Internal Storage > Documents and extract AutopilotDiagnostics.zip. This file/folder will contain a CSV file with a a file name that begins “DeviceHash…”.
Upload the CSV file to the Windows Autopilot service
In order to simplify our management a bit and be able to create a dynamic device group with only HoloLens devices, assign a GroupTag to the device such as “Hololens”.
Creating a device group for HoloLens
Like all things in device management, we are really dependent on groups. In this case, we will use a device group to target only our HoloLens devices.
You can create a new Azure AD group by selecting Groups in the left hand side menu in the MEM portal. Then select “New group“.
Give your group a good name and select “Dynamic Device” as Membership type.
Next, click “Add dynamic query” at the bottom and add the following rule syntax, but replace the word Hololens used here with the name of your GroupTag.
Click Save followed by Create to finish the creating of the group.
Setting up enrollment
First off, we need to create a new Deployment Profile for the HoloLens platform.
You will find the Deployment Profiles by navigating to Devices > Windows > Windows Enrollment and selecting Deployment Profile.
When you have selected the Deployment Profiles card, select “+ Create Profile” and choose HoloLens as the platform.
Give your profile a name in the Basic tab and press next. On the “Out-of-box experience (OOBE)”, you can really only have to change the name template if you are looking to use custom names for your HoloLenses. In my example, I’ve left all values to default. Press next to move to the next tab.
On the Assignment tab, select your HoloLens device group and press next.
Review your settings and hit Create to finish the creating of the deployment profile.
Creating a Filter for HoloLens
To make sure that we only target settings deployed towards users to their HoloLens devices, we need to create a filter we will use later on.
Navigate to Tenant administration > Filter. Create a new filter by clicking “+ Create” in the top ribbon. Give your filter a name, such as HoloLens, and select Windows 10 and later as the platform.
Since filters are kind of like dynamic groups, we need to add a syntax. The easiest way I’ve found to include HoloLens devices is to use our Deployment profile name, the attribute is called EnrollmentProfileName on the device. Enter the name of your Deployment Profile in the Value field.
Click next, then review and create the filter.
Configuring kiosk mode
You could basically already enroll your devices now and be done, but it will be like an unconfigured PC, your end-user will miss vital settings and applications.
Since this is a Windows-based platform, you can reuse or duplicate profiles you already have for Wi-Fi, certificates, and such. Not all profiles make a whole lot of sense to use on the HoloLens (such as settings for the Office suite or Chrome browser to give some examples).
The profile we need to create to set up the Kiosk-mode on HoloLens is a profile based on the Kiosk template.
Go to Devices > Windows > Configuration profiles and create a new profile by pressing “+ Create profile” in the top ribbon. Select Windows 10 and later as platform and Templates as Profile type. Scroll down and find the Kiosk template and click create.
As always, give your profile a name based on your naming convention on the basic tab and press next.
Based on your scenario, select either “Single app, full screen” or “Multi app kiosk” as kiosk mode and select “No” on the question if device is running S mode.
In my scenario, I will configure that users will use the device using their Azure AD accounts. Since I have to specify a group with eligible users, I’ve in my setup used a group containing most of my users meaning that all my users are allowed to sign in to the HoloLens. You can easily assign this to either a group of users or even a specific user. You can also add additional groups and/or users. Depending on your scenario, you can make different choices here.
Next up is to select what applications we will run on the device. This can be done by either selecting built-in applications or applications distributed through MEM. Keep in mind that Win32 applications DO NOT WORK on the HoloLens when selecting applications.
If you want to add built-in or system applications, this is done by adding the AUMID of the application. You can find all the HoloLens 2 applications AUMID on this MSFT Docs site.
In this example, I will add one built-in application and one store app. You add apps by pressing the “Add…” button under the Browser and application section.
When adding a app by using AUMID, you give the application a name (preferably what it’s called in the reference document) and the AUMID for the application.
When adding a store app, MEM will list the apps you have available for distribution. Also, keep in mind that you will need to make sure to target the application distribution towards the HoloLens group.
Leave the rest of the settings to the default value and click Next.
In order for the Kiosk mode to function properly when requiring Azure AD users to sign in, the profile needs to be targeted toward users otherwise nothing will happen in my experience. If you are notdoing personal logins, you can target this towards a device group.
In order to not assign the Kiosk-mode to all the user’s devices, we will need to use a filter to limit what devices the profile is assigned to.
On the Assignment tab, select your group of users who will be allowed to use the HoloLens and then press “Edit filter” next to the group.
Select “Include filtered devices in assignment” and choose your filter then press Select.
Press next and leave the Application Rules to blank and review and create your profile.
Enroll and sign in!
Now it’s time to enroll your device, simply start the device and follow the on-screen instructions.
What I’ve seen is that sometimes, the kiosk mode does not kick in on the first login after enrollment. If this happens, simply sign in and out of the device, this has done the trick for me!
Updated on the 29th of September 2022 due to changes in Quick Assist installation.
Like I mentioned in the blogpost about Remote Help, the build in Quick Assist tool in Windows 10 and Windows 11 is great for supporting friends and family. However, it’s not that great to support an organization since vital features are missing like handling UAC and logging. There is also a lot to wish for when it comes to how accounts are managed and the overall experience in a corporate setup using Quick Assist.
So, when we have deployed Remote Help to all our users, we want to remove Quick Assist to improve security (so unauthorized people cannot remotely connect) and to ease confusion about what remote support tool to use.
There are several ways of doing this, but I’m taking the approach that we don’t have a custom image since our devices has been enrolled through Windows Autopilot using vanilla images. So how can we remove the feature, and make sure that the end-user doesn’t get creative with enabling it again?
The answer to this is using proactive remediations.
What is proactive remediations?
Proactive remediations is a part of the Endpoint analytics section of Microsoft Endpoint Manager. You can find it by going to Reports > Endpoint Analytics > Proactive Remediations. By default you will have to script packages published by Microsoft.
Proactive Remediations is a script package where you can find and fix things on your clients, before this generates a ticket to your help desk.
However, since these are scripts running, you can do about anything to be honest. Each script package consists of a detection script and a remediation script. The scripts are then deployed to the devices through MEM and will report back. You can find reports on how many times a script has run, and how many times it has fixed an issue. Fixed and issue means that it has run the remediation script. You can read more about how they work and what you can do on e.g. Microsoft Docs.
One thing you could do is to detect if a Windows component is active, and if found active then disable it.
How do I remove new Quick Assist?
Due to an update, Quick Assist have now moved in to the Microsoft Store, meaning that we need a new way to remove the store app. Next chapter will cover the old application which was a Windows Capability.
There are several ways to remove pre-installed application from Windows, you could either get the application from the Business Store and assign it as “Uninstall” for all devices/users, or you could user PowerShell to remove applications.
For this, we will use Proactive Remediation to detect if the Quick Assist is installed, and if so we will remove it. This would remove the application even if the user installs it them self. There are other ways to do this as well, like only deploying the removal part and blocking the application with AppLocker.
I’ve put these scripts in my GitHub repository, for this part use the *_app files.
If our detection script finds the application, we will run a remediation script to uninstall it, just two lines of simple PowerShell code (thanks @LasseiLarod for the contribution to this).
Now all that we need to do is to make sure that we run the script in User Context, since the application is installed in the user context.
How do I remove old Quick Assist?
One way to disable Quick Assist, even if the user enables it again, I have found is to use a proactive remediation which checks if Quick Assist is enabled on the device, and if it finds that it is Quick Assist is disabled.
Quick Assist isn’t an app installed from the store, it’s a Windows capability which means that we cannot uninstall the app.
To do this, we firstly need a script which will identify if Quick Assist is enabled. One way of setting that up is like this, a simple PowerShell script that my college helped me create (thank you Daniel).
This simple script will check if the Windows capability is enabled, if enabled it will run the remediation script which disables Quick Assist. It’s a one-liner:
What could be good to keep in mind is that if the version of Quick Assist changes, this disable-part will stop working. I’ve’ tried using a more generic string, but I couldn’t get it to work. However, my PowerShell skills are quite limited.
One thing that is important when working with IT infrastructure is to set the right level of permissions for the right people. Principle of least privilege is a good rule of thumb to follow, also in Microsoft Endpoint Manager.
It’s quite easy to just say that “okay, all admins gets the administrator role” which make everyone equal. But is it a good idea? No.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM) has a quite extensive Role Based Access Control (RBAC) function built in, and there are also Azure roles which applies to MEM. There is also the possibility to create your own custom roles if you want to define the roles yourself, or if you want to limit one of the built in.
Why use RBAC?
There is a simple answer to this. Improve security. Granting admin permissions to everyone administrating the system isn’t necessary. Your level of permissions should be related to what task you are performing. A Help Desk operator does not have the same needs as a third level support engineer; hence they should not have the same level of access.
Aiming for the principle of least privilege when looking at how to administrate MEM is important and implementing it at an early stage so that you assign roles accordingly.
For certain scenarios, there might be a need for users to have additional levels of access, being able to elevate Intune admin for example through Privileged Identity Management (PIM) but having a less privileged access as their normal level. Please note however, that PIM is an Azure AD P2 feature which you will need to make sure you are licensed for (it’s included in EMS and M365 E5 license SKU, but not in the E3 SKU).
Quick and dirty setup
So how to get going? One efficient way of doing it, which I like, is to firstly identify what roles you have in your organization and then map out what roles they should have. I prefer doing this in Excel, just listing the roles and then look at what Azure AD roles are related to MEM and then add the built in MEM roles. Then just simply add an X on who should have what roles. As you see in the example down below, some operational roles have several X in their row.
This should be adopted towards your organization and roles named what you are calling them.
Using PIM, especially for admin roles should be a default when you are setting this up. You will need additional licenses, but you will not need this for all users only your admin users.
For Azure AD you can use PIM without any hassle, it’s easy to setup and you can set it to automatic approvals. Have look at this Microsoft Docs article on how to do it!
I would suggest having PIM for all roles which are called admin, so for MEM specific roles that is the Intune Administrator role and the Azure AD Joined Device Local Administrator role, but there are additional roles related to this area.
When it comes to using PIM on MEM specific roles, this isn’t as straight forward. You will need to take a different approach. PIM for Intune roles could be argued how beneficial this is, but it does improve security and resilience. However, you need to use a preview feature for this called Privileged Access Groups which is a part of PIM, and you will need to make sure to enable your Azure AD group for role assignment when creating it (this can’t be added creating the group). The people over at MSEndpointManager.com have create a great guide about how to set this up.
But in short what you need to do is to create a group which is enabled for Azure AD roles assignment.
Then enable Privileged Access on the group you created to add it to PIM.
Then you can assign your role in MEM to this group.
In this example I’m assigning PIM to my Help Desk Operator role.
Doing this, you could potentially enable PIM for all your MEM roles. I would however not use PIM for roles which are read only roles.
Key takeaway
There are a bunch of built-in roles in MEM which covers most scenarios. However, there might be instances where you need to tweak this a little bit. A good example of this is the Remote Help role which I wrote about in my previous post. Remote Help might be useful for people who are not working in Intune as part of their daily job, this could be application specific support personal for example who don’t need access in MEM but have the need to remotely support their users.
Getting RBAC in place at an early stage will simplify operations and getting the right permissions for everyone involved down the line, and you will decrease misshappenings. Or just simply shadow IT doing their own thing in your controlled environment without change control or the approvals from the governance forums.
It finally happened. Microsoft released their own remote assistance tool called Remote Help at Ignite during the fall 2021. It was to be honest one of the things I got most excited about.
Licenses are still a bit unclear around this, Microsoft says it’s free to use during the preview but will come at an additional fee once GA hits. What this license model will look like, no one seems to really know at this point. So please be aware of that the licensing will change and that this is still public preview before putting this into production.
But the fact that it´s in public preview means that you can start assessing it and see if it will fulfil your needs!
The setup
To get going, you basically sign in to Microsoft Endpoint Manager, navigate to Tenant Administration > Connectors and Tokens > Remote Help and select Enable under the Settings tab.
And now it’s enabled!
You will also need to assign the correct rights to your support personal. If you are using the built in roles in Intune for this, this role is enabled by default for:
School administrator
Help Desk operator
Intune admin
If you want to add this role to a role, or create a specific custom role for Remote Help, you can do so by creating a new role and adding the Remote Help app” rights to that user.
You can create custom roles by going to Tenant administration > Roles and then select “+ Create“.
You will then have to assign your new role to an Azure AD group containing the users you want to add this role to by selecting Assignments on your newly created role and then “+ Assign”.
Give the assignment a name:
Add the group of users you want to assign this role to:
On the next blade you can select the scope for your support personal. You could for example only allow this group to remotely support a specific group of devices. But in this setup, I’m using “All devices” as the scope group.
If you are not using scope tags, just press next and then create your assignment.
Remote help app
The other part of this solution is the Remote Help app which you will need to distribute to your users.
To get the app, you simply download it from Microsoft at aka.ms/downloadremotehelp and you will get the application file.
Next step is to get this out to your computers through Intune, which means that you would need to package this as an Win32 app in Intune. Best way to do so is by using the IntuneWinAppUtil tool.
And create a detection rule based on that a file exist.
Once you have packaged it, uploaded it and distributed it to your clients, you are ready to go!
The experience
To connect, the admin or support personal needs to have the Remote Help app installed on their device (which should be deployed from Intune).
To launch a remote session with a user, there are two ways you can go at it. You as an admin can navigate to the device in the Microsoft Endpoint Management portal and go to Devices > Windows > Windows devices and find the device you want to support. On the device ribbon (where you see “Retire, Wipe, Delete”) find the three dots and select “New remote assistance session” and then click “Launch remote help”. This will open the Remote Help app. Update: This being preview and all, it seems like the experience has changed a bit since when I originally started setting this up in my lab. The proper way to initiate a remote session is to go through the app, not Microsoft Intune. Check out the updated Docs for more information.
To initiate a remote session, launch the Remote Help app from your computer.
The first time you launch Remote Help, you will be asked to sign in and accept the user agreement.
Once signed in, you get a similar experience as the Quick Assist app where you can either choose to get or give help.
To give help, you simply select “Get a security code” which will generate a code that you can provide to the user you are helping.
When you have generated the code, share it the user you are helping. When the user enters the code in the “Get help” section, the admin will get a prompt showing which user they are trying to connect to, and they can select if they want to take full control or just view the screen.
Based on the support persons selection, the user will get a prompt showing who is going to help them and to allow or cancel their request to connect.
As you can see below, Remote Help will prompt if the device you are connecting to is not compliant and you can choose to either accept or leave the session since this could mean an increased risk. This status is also shown in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager portal on the device.
And now we can see the user’s desktop and perform our remote support tasks!
One little nice feature I found was that there is some options to do annotations on the users screen if you want to guide them to do something, and there is also a message feature you can send a receive messages in.
Why use Remote Help
What sets Remote Help apart from e.g. Quick Assist in Windows is that it’s built for enterprises, not consumer. This means that you have more control and possibilities, such as using corporate credentials and being able to accept UAC prompts with your admin credentials.
One other major thing here is that logging. You can see who helped whom and when.
You can also easily monitor how much the remote help is being utilized.
You can find all these things from Tenant Administration > Connectors and tokens > Remote Help (Preview).
Additional thoughts
I’m a huge fan of this new product and I’m really excited to see what this will become once general available.
One thing that could be a good idea is to remove the Quick Assist app if you have that installed on your device, to reduce confusion but also to improve security a little bit since with the Quick Assist anyone can remote your users’ computers if they are not cautious. This can easily be done by deploying a PowerShell script to the devices.
Quick Assist isn’t built for enterprise use but is a great tool to support family and loved ones to be honest (I use it often to support family members).
This is a powerful way of gathering all devices imported to Autopilot into a single group to assign either enrollment profiles, configuration profiles or even applications without the need for any additional work or use of group tags.
However, this group being powerful makes things a bit harder when it comes to excluding devices that might need a different enrollment profile for testing, different device type or just a different use case.
There are different ways of doing this, but this is the way I found that works well and it assumes that you have another Azure AD group which you use to assign Enrollment Profiles, dynamic or assigned.
Let’s say we have two enrollment profiles:
Production profile
HoloLens profile
The “Production profile” is assigned using a group called “All Autopilot devices” which gets devices using the “device.devicePhysicalIds -any (_ -contains “[ZTDId]”)” string to gather all devices which are imported to the environment.
We have also imported the HoloLens devices in to our device list for Autopilot, which we are using a group tag to populate our “HoloLens devices” group with which is then used to assign the HoloLens profile.
Now comes the tricky part. Since we have the “catch all” group already, that will include the HoloLens’s which means that we will assign configuration profiles and applications that are assigned using that group.
Since our HoloLens’s are a different type of devices, we want to assign a separate set of configuration profiles and applications towards them, meaning that we need to exclude them from the “All Autopilot devices” group and add them a HoloLens specific group to assign our HoloLens profile.
Creating out groups
To add them to the HoloLens deployment profile you can create a dynamic group which is using Group Tags to populate. This will require you to add this group tag to all your HoloLens’s. In this case, we will use the Group Tag “Hololens”.
This will assign the HoloLens specific deployment profile to the device.
However, we also want to make sure that we do not include these devices in the bigger group which is used to assign the “regular” Windows policies. This was a bit trickier than I thought to be honest.
After playing around with excluding the group tag, which for some reason didn’t work that great, the most effective way was to exclude devices from my big “All Autopilot devices” group by using the fact that it has a deployment profile assigned to it. This value can be used in the rules for the group by saying that we don’t want to include devices having a deployment profiled called “Autopilot HoloLens” assigned to them.
By changing the rule to say that in addition to “catch all” also no include anything that has the deployment profile “Autopilot HoloLens” assigned to it, we will now have a group which will exclude all HoloLens devices!
This can of course be used for other things than HoloLens, it applies for anything that has a deployment profile assigned to it.
There are other ways to accomplish this, but this is the easiest way I’ve found so far!
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
