Tag: intune

Categories
Intune

Where is device heading

I started a blogpost something like this about 4 years ago:

“I’ve been thinking about this post for a long time, probably several years to be honest. What got me to get this done is something Microsoft released, the Windows 10 in cloud configuration, which is a configuration guide for how to move to cloud managed Windows 10 devices.

This is great!

This shows that managing Windows 10 purely from Microsoft Intune is not rocket science and it will make it easier for smaller companies especially to get going.

BUT this is also showing what I’ve been expecting for a couple of years. “

Let’s stop the tape right here. I’ve added to this post once back in 2022 but never finished it. And to be honest, this has been on my mind since 2016. I recall that this was planted in my head in a conference room at the Microsoft Madrid office at a meeting with my team back in the days.

This post was initiated long before the release of Windows 11, and before the release of Windows 365. AI was still something that was being explored but not a massive thing, we were more focusing on machine learning than AI. It feels like ages ago, but it still makes sense to talk about this given what is currently happening with Cloud PCs, AI, and continuous innovation in Windows 11.

This is probably to date the blogpost that has taken the longest to write, but it’s starting to make sense now.

The change of device management

When we talk about device management, and especially Windows, things tend to get technical and hard quite fast. Especially if we throw some on-premises things into the mix and talk about creating custom boot images (which is an artform in itself).

Now we are in the age of AI and Copilots. Copilots showing up everywhere for everything. We have currently seen what is called the Microsoft Security Copilot where security admins can query the Copilot to find issues and even troubleshot device configurations. This is only the beginning of the AI transformation we are on. The Security Copilot also connects into Microsoft Intune, becoming Copilot in Intune.

Looking at Microsoft Intune and how simple it is to get started with a surprisingly good baseline and basic device management, this is a fitting example of how this whole segment has evolved into something which does not need to be that complex anymore with servers, distribution points, image creation, OSD, GPOs. Using Intune, you can get a long way with the guided scenarios or the security baseline which are already existing in Intune today. You can even get suggestions on what to set using the Settings Insight feature in Intune which will give you recommendations on how to configure your security baseline using machine learning. And that is without any Copilots.

AI will help us

What has gotten me to finish this blogpost is the Copilot and Intune story that Microsoft is now telling, I attended WP Ninja Summit 2024 in Lucerne where Copilot was mentioned in a lot of sessions and showed real world value. Copilot can find issues with devices, or policies, which would take admins hours, or even days to find. If you get that in about a minute or two, that is an huge increase in productivity. Copilot is not yet in the state that it will suggest that “you should configure your setup like this”, it’s still learning Intune. But just putting the tools in the hands of admins simplifies their work… Wow.

But there is also a conflict of interest here. If I can use Copilot to find that error in a few minutes… Why do I need to pay expensive consultants to do the work for me? Well, I think we who live and breath device management needs to raise our line of sight a little and find what the next big thing is and how we can stay relevant. This will be challenge for many, but this change will also take several years to complete.

I would assume that this is just the start of a pretty epic journey in device management, making life easier and probably quite drastically changing how we work with device management. Microsoft has a lot of data of what “a good device management configuration” should look like. Even if most organisations think they are unique and have unique needs, most organisations share the same baseline needs but of course with their unique touch on-top of things. This is where the focus should be, not the baselines where we tend to spend way to much time on today.

What about Windows?

By listening to a lot of sessions around Windows 365 and looking at how Microsoft is positioning this as the future of Windows, I think we will see a shift in a few years. Not in the next one or two years, but looking at Windows 365 Boot, the new Windows 365 experience being released for Motorola Think Phone, and the general focus on sustainability I think we will see both a technical and culture shift in what a computer is in the next couple of years. Don’t get me wrong, we will still have some kind of device but it will probably be different to what we are used to today.

Just imagine that you suddenly could access your computer from any device you have, only needing one device to both get a mobile och desktop experience depending on your context. If you are like me, someone who work a lot from places where you don’t have a external monitors, well maybe your device will not be a smartphone only. Or maybe you even have two devices but your “laptop” is something with focus on giving you optimal battery life and great longevity.

One thing that sticks in my head right now though is “we are moving Windows to he cloud” and not just management with Windows 365. Windows as an operating system will still be the foundation of a lot of business work and applications, but how we consume it is where the difference will lie.

My predictions

So my big two predictions about where this whole area is heading, even if we are a few years out:

  • Intune management will drastically change once Copilot for Intune is more widely used, making device management in general a whole lot easier
  • Windows will be consumed for “a device” and that device might not have Windows installed on it. We will come back to the world of thin clients, but more optimized for the connected world.

Of course, several years of experience will still be relevant, but doing the clicking and selecting what exact setting to accomplish the wanted state, that will not be a hard part.

Categories
Digital Transformation

Windows 11 – make the move!

watercolor image of Windows computer

As I hope ALL of you know, Windows 10 is reaching End of Service (EOS) on the 14th of October 2025. If you haven’t marked your calendars already, do so now! This date is even more important if you haven’t made the move over to Windows 11 yet. This does not affect the Windows 10 LTSC currently in support.

The path to reaching Windows 11 can vary, and it’s hard to say that “this is how you should do it”. Some decide to combine this with their cloud journey, some simply just upgrades, and some haven’t really thought about it yet. This blogpost is aimed to inspire those of you who haven’t made the move yet for different reasons. And those of you who help others and need inspiration. So, less focus on tech and more focus on the reasoning to make the move.

Why should you move to Windows 11?

To be honest, the reason to move to Windows 11 is simple. Windows 10 will no longer receive updates unless you decide to pay for the Extended Security Updates (ESU). This will be a fairly expensive way to tackle staying up to date. Microsoft announced back in April that the first year will cost $61 per device the first year. Given that the Windows 11 upgrade is free, there are few reasons to not move. We also see over 99% application compability between Windows 10 and Windows 11. Looking at customers I’ve helped and talked about this with, the issue is rarely the applications anymore.

If we disregard from that Windows 11 brings a whole lot of new security related features to the OS. But it also brings more simplicity to the end user. One thing I hear often is that “the start menu is in the middle, our users will never learn this”. It takes about a day to get used to it, so the problem is not really there. This has so far not been an issue with the customers I’ve helped. Howeber, IT has often thought this would be the number one support issue.

What does Windows 11 bring to the table?

What Windows 11 brings is, however, innovation. Like it or not, Copilot will be part of our everyday life. In Windows 11, you have it at your fingertips with the native Copilot app. Depending on where you live, the experience will vary. There is a native app, or you will have to get the app from the store. Since AI and Copilot are mentioned in almost every context and situation, giving your end users access to a powerful AI in Windows is a huge improvement.

What is important with Windows 11 upgrades is communication to end-users so they know whats going on. Un-announced upgrades are rarley a good idea since it can potentially mess with people flows initially, or unexpected reboots. Teaching your users to make use of all the new and improved features of Windows 11. This is a great way to give the feeling that you from IT are proactive and offering them the latest and greatest.

The downside of moving to Windows 11

To be fair, downside is the wrong word. There is one potential problem with moving to Windows 11, which is that older hardware is not supported. We are talking about things released prior to 2017, creating a huge amount of e-waste. For many companies, this would not be a problem given that you have proper lifecycle management of your devices. But it creates a huge amount of devices which will not be feasable to use any more.

However, there are some ways you can still make use of them. Being a Microsoft advocate, my favourite is running Windows 365 on them. If you run a Cloud PC from a Windows 10 machine, the ESU will be free of charge and you can keep using that machine going forward, but that means using it to access a Cloud PC which is running Windows 11. You can ofcourse also convert them to thin clients using something like IGEL and have their OS accessing the Cloud PC.

But going back to the topic of e-waste. This will be a huge challange, not only from a corporate and logistic perspecitve. But from en environmental perspective. There will be A LOT of devices which needs to be recylced, and we must really hope that they will be recycled and not just thrown away or shreded.

Get to Windows 11 fast

So what is the fastest path to Windows 11? A lot of times when we talk about moving to Windows 11, we talk about going cloud native.

I’m all for going cloud native and I would recomend it to everyone. But going cloud native if you are on-premises or hybrid today is timeconsuming, and not really needed.

If you listen carefully how Microsoft talked about the journey, it’s rarely stated that you should re-install every device as cloud native. What they are talking about is moving to Intune, and that is a different thing since you can be Intune only but still being hybrid.

So for most organisations, going hybrid for all exisiting devices is the fastest path to Intune only. But remeber that ALL new devices should be cloud native (since you wont really gain anything from new hybrid devices).

But looping back to Windows 11 and getting there fast.

Windows 10 have had a steady release cadence, even if it has shifted a bit over the years. You have moved from Windows 10 20h2, to Windows 10 21h2, to Windows 10 22h2 using either Windows Update or Configuration Manager. When looking to move to Windows 11, you can view this as “yet another update” and deploy it as such.

You hopefully already have a working process for this in place, and if you are doing custom images this would apply to you imaging lifecycling as well.

Since we have about a year left, this would be the fastest way to get there and move to Intune after that.

Take aways

The main take away from this is that dont make the Windows 11 journey harder than it has to be. Windows 11 is not that scary and it’s a great operating system regardless of what different internet forums says. From a business perspective, this shouldn’t be a discussion. Just a go do!

We never discuss or get stuck on iOS versions in the same way, not wanting to move to the next version.

A couple of years ago, in the begining of this blog, I wrote about consumerization of corporate IT and it’s still relevant. We as individuals are driving change. We are no longer in a world where IT can say “no, we wont give you the lastest version of this and that” since things will stop working. If you run an unsupported version of Windows you are not only facing potential security threats. You will also see that a lot of your business applications will stop working, since these has adapted to the Windows as a Service concept introduced with Windows 10.

What is the biggest take away from this blog? If you haven’t set the plan to migrate to Windows 11, start now! You have less than a year left.

Categories
Intune Windows 365

Improving Decision Making with Intune Advanced Analytics Data

computers, clouds and reports

One thing that many IT administrators tackles every day is the discussion about “my computer feels slow” or “I need a faster computer”. Sometime the feeling of having a slow computer is legit, and sometimes it’s something else.

There are numerous DEX (Digital Employee Experience) tools out there on the market. This can provide you with a great overview of your whole ecosystem, ranging from Teams call quality to desktop experience. However, even if those tools are great, they come with a new set of data to analyze in a new tool. And in bigger organizations, the complicated puzzle of “who owns this and who makes remediations?” arises.

Since I write a lot about Microsoft stuff, we will dive into the Intune Advanced Analytics part of the Intune Suite.

Intune Advanced Analytics is a native part of Intune, which gives you more extensive reporting on your Windows devices. I know Windows isn’t 100% of the fleet in modern organizations but we need to start somewhere.

Setting up Intune Advanced Analytics

To start using Intune Advanced Analytics, you will need these three things.

  • Intune environment
  • Intune Suite licenses or Intune Advanced Analytics stand-alone license (remember, this is user based)
  • Configuring Endpoint analytics in Intune

I won’t go through how to obtain license, since this will vary from case to case depending on your setup.

Configuring Endpoint Analytics

The first thing you need to do is to configure Endpoint Analytics to receive data from your devices. Since I’m all in the cloud, we will look at how you do this for Intune managed devices. To do this, you need to have the Intune Service Administrator role, also known as Intune Administrator.

Head over to the Endpoint Analytics blade in Intune (you can find it under Reports or at https://aka.ms/endpointanalytics). When in there, select the Settings blade.

You can see that my tenant already uses the Intune data collection policy. This default policy exists in all tenants, but you need to make sure it’s assigned to your devices.

Manually create the policy

If you can’t find the policy in your environment, it’s no big deal. You just need create a new policy based on the template for Windows Health monitoring.

If you are configuring this for the first time, make sure to switch Health monitoring to Enable and set the Scope to Endpoint analytics.

Deploy this policy to your devices using either the built in “All devices” group or use a device group.

When you set this up for the first time, it can take up to 24 hours for the data to populate. If you are looking to use Advanced Analytics, expect up to 48 hours.

Allow access to URLs

The last step to do is to make sure that your devices are allowed to reach the URL needed for Endpoint Analytics. This is important if you have a restrictive firewall or if you use a webfilter/proxy to run all your traffic through.

For Intune, the needed URL is:

https://*.events.data.microsoft.com

If you want to read more about how to set this up for Configuration Manager managed devices, check out the Microsoft Learn page.

Getting access to the data

Now when 24 hours have passed, we should start seeing data being populated. If you have additional people who should not be admins who need to review the data. There are a few different built-in roles you can use, or create a custom role.

These are the different options you have:

Role nameMicrosoft Entra roleIntune roleEndpoint analytics permissions
Global AdministratorYesRead/write
Intune Service AdministratorYesRead/write
School AdministratorYesRead/write
Endpoint Security ManagerYesRead only
Help Desk OperatorYesRead only
Read Only OperatorYesRead only
Reports ReaderYesRead only

Once we have our roles in order, we can start looking at the data!

Looking at the data

The Endpoint Analytics feature consist of 6 different blades

  • Startup Performance
  • Application reliability
  • Work from anywhere
  • Resource performance
  • Remoting connection

These features are available with the regular Intune license. With the Intune Advance Analytics license you will get a few more. And it’s automatically integrated into the Intune administrator experience.

  • Custom device scopes
  • Anomalies
  • Enhanced device timeline
  • Device query
  • Battery health

If you want to read more about what’s included, I would suggest checking out this Microsoft Learn article.

Reviewing my devices

But as I stated in the beginning of the post, let’s talk about reviewing resource performance. With the regular Intune license, you will gain access to resource performance for your Cloud PCs. With this, I get insights which Cloud PCs are meeting my targets and what Cloud PCs I should investigate upgrading to a different SKU. This data can be broken down to a device or model. This gives me great data about my environment on CPU and RAM spikes when they are being used.

All devices get a score based on their performance, and you can configure what your baseline is in the Endpoint Analytics settings.

You can break the numbers down based on model or individual device performance to get a better understanding.

With the 2408 Intune Service update, this was also made available for physical devices if you have the Intune Advance Analytics license enabled. This will provide me with insights on how my physical devices are performing when it comes to RAM and CPU. I can also learn if they have continuous spikes indicating that they need an upgrade.

If we stand in the “Device performance” tab, we can see all Cloud PCs and physical PCs gathered in the same place. You can also compare Cloud PC and physical PC performance.

Looking at specific devices

If we click on the name of a device, you will be redirected to the blade “User experience” on the device itself. You can also find it if you search for a device in the device list and click in to view that device.

From here, you can see a lot of data about the device around its performance.

As you can see, my Surface Laptop Go 3 has had a few minor spikes in RAM the last 14 days but nothing major.

And if we look at the overall score, it’s pretty okay.

Device timeline

There is one more really nice feature with the Intune Advanced Analytics we can see, and that is a Device Timeline (last tab on the top).

In here, we can see historical data on events that has happened on the device which impact the user experience. As you can see on this device, I’m having a few issues with applications.

And if we jump back and look at another device, a Cloud PC, we can see the same kind of data.

One interesting thing I found while writing this blog post is that I compared my Surface Laptop Go 3 i5 with 16gb RAM with my 4vCPU/16GB Cloud PC. What I can see was that my Cloud PC scores higher. I would say that I use them in a similar way, the same amount of time. I do know that the Cloud PC has a little bit of a more powerfull CPU (being a cloud PC),

The Cloud PC scores 98 in resource performance.

While my Surface Laptop Go 3 scores 77.

So performance wise, Cloud PCs are doing a lot better. However, the Surface Laptop Go 3 is not a fair comparance being a more “low tier” PC. However, they are still both performing really good for what I use them for. So this is important to take into considerations when looking at the data.

Take away

Knowing how the performance of the devices in your environment chelan p you figure out when devices needs to be replaces or upgraded. As you already know, backing your decisions using data is key! Intune can provide you with a lot of data on your device without the need to buy a third party tool and deploying/maintaining a client on the device.

However, if we start looking at “real” DEX products, Intune Advanced Analytics does not provide the same level of data. You will also need to combine several parts of Intune to be able to perform e.g. remediations on the things you find. You still need to manually take actions or create remediation scripts on your findings.

But if you are just getting started and need “something”, this will provide you with a great overview of your environment! This will help you make better decisions and help your end-users even better!

I hope you liked this post and that it gave you some insights to what you can do with Intune Advanced Analytics!

Categories
Intune Windows 365

Summer recap – what did we miss?

summer admin

Like all Swedes, summer means vacation mode for 4-5 weeks and that means not keeping up with what’s happening in the world.

So here is a recap of what’s been happening during the summer months.

MVP renewal

In the begning of July, the MVP renewals where announced and I’m happy to announce that I’ve been renewed as a Windows and Devices MVP for the 3rd time.

Big congratulation to all my fellow MVPs that got renewed for 2024!

Windows 365 updates

July was full of Windows 365 updates, there has been updates for Windows 365 each week since July 1st which is really awesome. A lot of great updates.

Here are some highlights, but if you want to see the full list check it out here.

Cross region disaster recovery

Windows 365 cross region disaster recovery is an optional service for Windows 365 Enterprise which protects the Cloud PCs and data against regional outages. This is a seperatly licensed service which can be purchased as an add-on to your existing service.

Cross region disaster recovery in Windows 365 | Microsoft Learn

Windows 365 Cloud PC gallery images use new Teams VDI

The new Teams for VDIs has been added to the Windows 365 image gallery, containing all the optimizations for Windows 365. All your newly previsioned Cloud PCs will containg the new optimizations.

Microsoft Teams on Cloud PCs | Microsoft Learn

Cloud PC support for FIDO devices and passkeys on macOS and iOS (preview)

Windows 365 Cloud PCs now support FIDO devices and passkeys for Microsoft Entra ID sign in on macOS and iOS.

Updated default settings for Windows 365 security baselines

Microsoft has released an updated version of the security baseline for Windows 365. You can find a full list of the updated settings here: List of the settings in the Windows 365 Cloud PC security baseline in Intune.

New GPU offerings for Cloud PCs are now generally available

Microsoft has finally released the new GPU offering! The GPU offerings are suitable for graphical intense workloads requiring a more optimized performance. The offering consists of three different SKUs called Standard, Super and Max with different configurations for different kinds of workloads.

GPU Cloud PCs in Windows 365 | Microsoft Learn

Uni-directional clipboard support is now generally available

The clipboard settings for Windows 365 and AVD has been in preview for a while, but have now been

moved into general availability with some pretty nice added functionallity. You can configure a lot of new different content type, and you can select to allow which direction clipboard should be allowed. This applies to both Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop.

Configure the clipboard transfer direction in Azure Virtual Desktop | Microsoft Learn

Intune updates

The list for Windows 365 was long (in the aspect of Windows 365 updates), but there has been even more Intune updates.

If you want to read the full list of updates during the summer months, check out the full list here.

Update for Apple user and device enrollments with Company Portal

Microsoft has updated the registration process for Apples devices using the Intune Company Portal. The main change is that now the Entra ID registration happens after the enrollment, instead of during the enrollment. This applies for both iOS/iPadOs devices and macOS devices.

The change means that if you are using dynamic device Entra ID groups which rely on the device registration, you need to make sure that the users complete the whole process.

iOS/iPadOS device enrollment guide for Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn

New configuration capabilities for Managed Home Screen

If you are using managed home screen for Android, you can now enable the virtual app-switcher button to allow users to switch between apps on a kiosk device.

Configure the Microsoft Managed Home Screen app for Android Enterprise

Copilot in Intune now has the device query feature using Kusto Query Language (KQL) (public preview)

If you are using Copilot in Intune, you can now generate a KQL query using Copilot while asking in natural language. Great way to learn KQL or get inspiration for your querys!

Microsoft Copilot in Intune

New setting in the Device Control profile for Attack surface reduction policy

Microsoft has added the “Allow Storage Card” setting to the Attack surface reduction policy, which can also be found in the settings catalog.

AllowStorageCard 

New operatingSystemVersion filter property with new comparison operators (preview)

There is a new filter property for operatingSystemVersion, which is available in a public preview.

This filter allows you to use operators like GreaterThan, GreaterThanOrEquals, LessThan and LessThanOrEquals to your oprating system version and is available for Android, iOS/iPadOS, macOS and Windows!

Consolidation of Intune profiles for identity protection and account protection

Microsoft has done some cleaning up around identity and account protection policies and added them all into a single profile called Account protection which can be found in the account protection policy node of endpoint security. This is the only template which will be available going forward for identity and account protection. The new profile also includes Windows Hello for Business and Windows Credential Guard.

Account protection policy for endpoint security in Intune

New Intune report and device action for Windows enrollment attestation (public preview)

There is a new report in public preview for finding out if a device has attested and enrolled securly while being hardware-backed.

Windows enrollment attestation

New support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Microsoft Intune now supports device management for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can enroll and manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux devices, and assign standard compliance policies, custom configuration scripts, and compliance scripts.

Deployment guide: Manage Linux devices in Microsoft Intune 

Newly available Enterprise App Catalog apps for Intune

The Enterprise App Catalog has updated to include additional apps. For a complete list of supported apps.

Apps available in the Enterprise App Catalog.

New actions for Microsoft Cloud PKI

The Microsoft Cloud PKI has been updated with some new features.

  • Delete: Delete a CA.
  • Pause: Temporarily suspend use of a CA.
  • Revoke: Revoke a CA certificate.

Delete Microsoft Cloud PKI certification authority

ACME protocol support for iOS/iPadOS and macOS enrollment

Microsoft has started a phased rollout of the infrastructure change to support the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol. When a new Apple devices enroll, the management profile from Intune receives an ACME certificate instead of a SCEP certificate. Existing OS and hardware eligible devices do not get the ACME certificate unless they re-enroll. 

Windows updates

The realse of Windows 11 24h2 is getting closer and closer, and it could be guessed to be released in a September/October time frame looking at past releases.

One thing that is also important to highlight is that we are getting closer and closer to the Windows 10 EOS, which means that we really need to focus on getting those devices migrated or removed.

Categories
Intune Tips & Tricks

Are the settings what you think they are?

Something I know a lot of Microsoft Intune admins have been frustrated about for a while, especially if you come from the GPO world, is making sure that the settings you applied are what you think they are on the device. I mean, things happen. Users can be local admins and change stuff, a support person could have changed something locally, or stuff just won’t work.

As we all know, an up and running Intune Windows device will check in with Intune every 8 hours to see if the settings are still correct. 8 hours is quite a long time if you have a faulty configuration, and not all users know that they can manually synchronize their device with Intune (or an admin can do so).

This is where the newly introduced Config Refresh enters the stage!

What is Config Refresh?

Config Refresh is a new setting in Windows 11 (23h2 or 22h2 with the 2024 June update) which lets you define the interval that the Windows device should refresh the configuration based on what is defined in Intune. In the GPO world, this happens automatically every 90 minutes, and in the Intune world this is 8 hours! But with Config Refresh we can squeeze this down as short as 30 minutes or push it all the way up to 24 hours (why someone would do that, I don’t know but I bet there are those scenarios).

But this isn’t just changing the default 8 hour intervall, this actually brings some new stuff to the table:

  • A reset operation to reset any settings you manage which use the Policy CSP
  • Configuration options to allow reset of managed settings to take place as frequently as every 30 minutes
  • Offline functionality, not requiring connectivity to an MDM server
  • Ability to pause Config Refresh for troubleshooting purposes with automatic resume after 24 hours

This means that we get a bunch of new features in the MDM world which we have not had before!

How do I configure it?

But how do I configure this in my environment? The Config Refresh policy is set in the settings catalog, so let’s jump straight into Devices – Windows – Configuration and add a new Settings Catalog policy.

As usual, give your policy a name which makes sense to you in your environment and click next. I’m going for “Win – Config Refresh” in this example.

Now let’s search for “Config Refresh” and add both the settings to our policy.

Let’s go for a 30-minute interval in this example but set what makes sense to your environment (default value is 90 minutes). Also, make sure to enable the “Config Refresh” setting before clicking on next.

If you are using scope tags, you can add that in the next step otherwise move on to assignment. Since this is a device scope setting, let’s target the device for this one so we can make sure that all our devices get this setting regardless of who signs in. If you want to filter our specific devices, add that as well here.

On the last step, review your settings before clicking on “Create“.

This will configure your devices to refresh their policies every 30 minutes!

Bonus:

If you for some reason want to prevent a device from doing a Config Refresh, you can find the device and press those three dots on the right side of the ribbon. You will then find “Pause config refresh”.

You can then pause the refresh for up to 24 hours.

Key take away

Using the Config Refresh we can make sure that our device has the correct configuration with greater certainty, and we can adjust the intervall to fit our needs.

This give us as admins a larger sence of control when managing devices and wanting to make sure that our devices has the correct settings. If you are coming from the GPO world you will be very familiar with this since GPOs refreshes every 90 minutes (default), and now you can make Intune work the same way! Yet one less thing that you will be missing from the old world!

Hope you find this as usefull as I do, and happy clicking!

Categories
Intune Intune for noobs

5 things you didn’t know you could do in Microsoft Intune

person working with intune

I thought I would share a few things you might not know that you are able to do in Intune, small things that might not be related to device management itself but you might not be aware off!

As all of you know, Microsoft Intune is constantly changing, there are news and updates each week. This means that some of these things might change in the future, who knows!

But let’s kick it off. Here are 5 things you didnt know you could do in Intune.

Change language and region

You have probably seen the settings icon in the top of the Intune portal, this is where you can access the portal settings.

When you click the settings icon, you will be taken to the Portal settings pane of Microsoft Intune.

As you can see, there are a lot of different things you can modify and control. E.g. if you have multiple directories or subscriptions you can change which your default is. This is also where you enable darkmode (if you are like me and prefer darkmode). But I though we would focus on the language settings.

If we navigate to the “Language + region” pane, we can select which language we want the portal to be in. This settings is not a global setting, this only affect my session. Like many others, I prefer to use the English version of MS Intune (the translations in Swedish are a bit wild some times), but I still want my regional format to be Swedish. I can easily select my preferences here and just hit apply and it will refresh the session with a new language for me.

If you are familiar with Azure or Entra, this works the same way!

Modify the left side menu

We probably all know and love the left side navigation menu, this is where we can select if we want to access devices or apps for example.

But did you know you can customize this menu?

If you navigate to “All services“, you will see a table of all the available services within Microsoft Intune, and if you look closely you will notice that there is a small star next to each service.

By default today, all is marked except for “Surface Management Portal” and if you want easy access to that you can simply just star that one too and it will show up in the navigation menu.

But let’s say I’m only interested in seeing devices, apps and groups, I can simply just mark them with a star and they will be the only one displayed in the navigation menu alongside with reports which we cannot remove.

One other neat feature is that you can rearrange the order of the navigation menu by simply dragging the headings around if you want to sort the differently.

Easily change between accounts

If you are using multiple accounts in Microsoft Intune, there is a simple way to just change which account you are using. If you have ever worked in the Azure portal, this is the same functionality.

Simply click your profile picture in the top right corner and sign in with a diffetent user. When you have signed in with an additional user, you can easily just switch by selecting that account.

Access the PIM portal

For most administrational roles, you use Microsoft Entra Priviledge Identity Management, or simply PIM, to grant the priviledged role that you will use in order for your account not to have that role all the time.

This can be setup in many different ways, and you can even PIM Intune roles if you use group feature.

However, you don’t need to go through the Entra portal to access your PIM roles. Simply navigate to Tenant Administration > Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management and you will reach the same portal.

From here, you can simply activate your roles, or approve other requests.

Shortcut to the Entra portal

Last but not least, when we are on the topic of Microsoft Entra. Did you know that there is a shortcut to the Entra portal in Intune?

Just navigate to All services in the navigation menu, and under “Other consoles” you will find Microsoft Entra.

When you click that link, a new tab will open with the Entra portal!

Categories
Intune

Intune Scope tags – What is it and what can we use it for?

Okay, something that has been around in Microsoft Intune for quite some time is Scope tags. You know that step before assignment when creating a policy or profile?

In this post, I was thinking we would talk through what it is and what you can use it for since it’s a quite power full tool and very useful if you are working in larger environments and want to delegate rights since you can combine it with the Intune roles to really have a granular setup when it comes to who can do what. If you want to read more about the Intune RBAC setup, have a look at this post I wrote a few years ago called RBAC in Intune- Who does what at the zoo.

What is even scope tags?

Scope tags is not something you use by itself, it is connected to the Intune RBAC setup, since you can control what you different administrators can see and do.

If I have a scope tag called Sweden which I use on my policies, I can create an Intune role granting only permission to see and administrate things related to that scope.

This means that I can grant access to only certain parts of Intune for my administrators, delegating the responsibility to the Swedish organisation to manage Sweden while Norway and Iceland only can manage their things.

How ever, this only applies to Intune roles, so if you use an EntraID role granting more access, like the Intune Administrator role, scopetags are not part of the solution.

In general, it’s a good idea NOT to use the Intune administrator for all your administrators since this is a very powerfull administrator role also outside Intune. It is the Global Admin of Intune almost (but not as power full).

Setting up Scope tags

To use scope tags, you need to define them which you do by navigating to Tenant Admin – Roles and select Scope tags. You will see that you have one default scope tag, but you can add more in here.

To create a Scope tag, you simply press “+ Create” and we will give our scope tag name, which will be the one used in the portal. We can also add a comment explaining what this scope tag is used for which can be a good idea. When done, click Next.

In the assignment step, we will add a group which contains all out Swedish devices. There are a lot of different ways you could set this group up given that you want to not only catch the Windows devices, you would also probably like to see their mobile devices. In this example, I have a dynamic group looking for all Windows devices tagged with the Autopilot group tag “SE” using this dynamic membership rule.

(device.devicePhysicalIds -any _ -eq "[OrderID]:SE")

When I’ve added my group I will click Next to get to the last step in the scopetag creation.

On the last step you can review your settings before creating it. If everything looks like you want it to, click Create and your scope tag will be created.

Repeat this step for all the scope tags you need, as you can see in my lab I currently have 3 scope tags and the default one.

Using scope tags for roles in Intune

Now that we have create our scope tags, we can add them to a role in Intune as a first step.

Head into Tenant Admin – Roles and select “All roles“. Then find the role that you want to configure, we will use the “Help Desk Operator” as an example.

Click on the name of the role to configure it and you want to head into “Assignments” which is where we define who has this role.

In here, we will click on “+ Assign” to add a new assignment. Since we are setting this up for the Swedish help desk, we will call this “Sweden“. Click Next.

On the next step we will add the group of Swedish help desk operators by clicking on “Add group” and selecting our Help desk Sweden user group. Click Next.

Next step is to add the scope groups, which devices and user we want to be able to manage. This means that we can limit this even further. For now, we will select all users and all devices and click Next.

In the next and last configuration step we will select what scope tag this Help Desk Operator is allowed operate with, meaning what devices and other object can it interact with. In this step we will select our Sweden scope tag and click Next.

As usual, before creating the role assignment you can review you options. Then click Create.

How does it look for my Help Desk Operator in Sweden?

So, what does things now look like for my Swedish help desk operator which we can call Moltas? Well, Moltas can only see things which has the scope tag Sweden. He can see all user and all groups, but he can only see two devices in the environment, since these are part of the scope tag Sweden.

If we compare this to a user with the Intune administrator role, you can see that the view is limited in the amount of devices.

If we take a look at one of the devices Moltas can see, we can actually see that it automatciallu got the scope tag Sweden since it’s a part of the “All Sweden device” group mentioned further up in the post.

We can also add scope tags to profiles that we create, making it possible to grant permission to e.g. one business area to manage their on profiles, applications and so on.

Since I’ve added the scope tag to this profile, Moltas will be able to see this one but not the rest of my profiles, but given his role he will not be able to do any modifications to this profile (Help Desk Oprator does not allow that).

Worth mentioning is also that if this administrator would have the rights to create objects, all their objects would have the scope tag Sweden.

Key take aways

Using scope tags and combinding it with the Intune roles makes it really easy and power full to delegate access to local administrator or different business units to operate their own settings in a bigger tenant. You can e.g. make sure that the local IT support in Sweden cannot see or touch the Norweigan devices.

I really like this feature, and it’s really convinient in larger environments. You can off course limit the access even further by not granting access to all users and all devices, limiting it even further.

Categories
Intune

Copilot in Windows – How to turn it off using MS Intune

As everyone knows by now, Copilot is coming to Windows. For people in some parts of the world (e.g. USA) this is already a reality. But for us in Europe, we are still waiting for it to be made available.

I rarely write posts about how to disable things, I’m a fan of giving the power to the end-user to use the new awesome tools made available for them. But Copilot is a massive thing, and for many organizations this is both a legal/policy issue, and a technical readiness issue. We need to be able to provide our users with services in a controlled way.

Many of the larger organizations I’ve been working with over the years take this approach, enabling new services in a controlled way.

So, let’s look at how we can control this using Microsoft Intune. In this post, we will not dig into what Copilot for Windows is.

Creating a policy

As usual, my focus is on cloud solutions so we will look into how you can do this using Microsoft Intune and not GPOs.

Today, there is no Settings Catalog, so we need to rely on a Custom policy which we create by heading into the Device blade, choosing Windows > Configuration Profiles and select “+ Create” > “New policy“. Then we select Windows 10 and later as platform, and use Template > Custom as profile type.

As usual, start of by giving your profile a good name based on your naming convention.

Now, lets add a custom setting by pressing the “Add” button.

Add the following information to your custom entry:

Name: Disable Windows Copilot
Description: 
OMA-URI: ./User/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/WindowsAI/TurnOffWindowsCopilot
Data type: Integer
Value: 1

Should look something like this and then hit save at the bottom of the fly out.

You have now successfully added a custom CSR setting.

Hit Next at the bottom of the screen and assign your policy to a user/device group. As always, if you are doing this in production, start with a test group before going for broad deployment.

For this demo purpose, I’ve added the built in “All users” group.

Skip the “Applicability rules” and head to “Review + Create” and review your profile before creating it. Once the profile has been created, the waiting game starts for the policy to apply. As usual, you can speed this up by pressing “Sync” on any of your devices that will be targeted.

When the policy has been applied, the Copilot icon will be removed from the task bar.

Doing a controlled roll-out

We have currently removed Copilot for all the users in your environment, but how do we start enabling it again?

Well, we need to do two things:

  • Create a group for our allowed users/devices
  • Exclude them from the policy we just created

Since the default value for the Windows Copilot feature is to be enabled, we don’t really need to add a new policy. We can just exclude our targeted users/devices. This also makes broad deployment easy since we can gradually just exclude users/devices until we want to enable it for everyone.

Please be aware that the change is not instant, the device needs to check-in before the policy is updated (but it’s fast when you do a forced sync).

Take away

So, would we disable this for all users and do a controlled roll-out? Well new features are not always easy for end-users to gasp or even understand that they have. People within IT tend to always want the latest and greatest and be early adopters. But “real” end-users are not always like that. We need to make sure that we can get information out to our end-users about this awesome new feature.

There might also be that we need to do some assessments around the service before we can enable it in our environment, this could be both legal and internal policy that is controlling this.

But as always, I really encourage you to enable this for your end-users once it’s available in your region. For us in Europe, we will have to wait a bit longer, but looking at the recent announcements around a Copilot-button on all Windows keyboards, I think we can really tell where we are heading with this.

So please, don’t just disable this for the sake of disabling. And if you do disable it, have a plan to enable it. It will bring awesome value to your end-users (especially if you have Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses).

Categories
Modern Workplace

Microsoft Ignite 2023 recap

It’s that time of the year again. Not Christmas. Microsoft Ignite time!

This year I decided not to go to Seattle, but instead follow it virtually from home. I can say now when Microsoft Ignite is over that I’ve had a severe case of FOMO the last couple of days, by just seeing all the pictures it looked like it was a really awesome event!

But since MS Ignite is over, it means that it’s time for a recap. What did I find most interesting?

For starters. There was a clear theme this year. AI, AI, Copilot, Copilot and Copilot. 😂

Oh, and the picture in the top of this post is of course created using AI!

Windows 365

There was a bunch of new things released within Windows 365 at Ignite, and Windows 365 actually got time in the main keynotes!

New Windows app – A preview of a new app to support not only Windows 365 and Cloud PC, but to also give you all your Azure Virtual Desktops, DevBox and published apps in the same place. The cool thing is that it’s also platform independed so we will see the same experiance on all major platforms going forward. You be able to have a “Windows” app on your iPad.

Windows 365 GPU support – Microsoft announced that GPU support for graphic design work is coming to Windows 365, and this will really be great for a lot of customer scenarios! It will be really interesting to see the pricetag on the GPU SKU, I would kind of guess that you really need to have a good business case and not just have it’s because GPUs are cool…

Windows 365 AI capabilities – It was also announced that you as an IT admin will be able to get AI based recommendation on sizing the Cloud PCs. This to help improving cost efficiency and user sattisfaction. Preview will be released soon.

Single-sign on (SSO) and passwordless authentication – SSO and passwordless has for quite some time now been in preview in the Intune portal, but it’s not in general availability. This also applies to approved AVD providers!

Watermarking, screen capture protection, and tamper protection – in order to increase security and prevent dataloss, these features which have been in public preview for a while are now in general availablity on both Windows 365 and AVD.

Windows 365 Customer Lockbox – To ensure that Microsoft support engineers can’t access content to do service operations without explicit approval, you can use Customer Lockbox. This is similar to other Customer Lockbox within the Microsoft ecosystem. This is in public preview.

Windows 365 Customer Managed Keys – I think this is a pretty cool update. You will soon be able to use your own encryption keys for encrypting the Windows 365 Cloud PC disk.

Windows

Eventhough Microsoft Build is usually where we see most Windows news, there were a couple during Ignite this year.

Copilot in Windows – This was actually announced at the event earlier this fall and went in to public preview for selected markets on the 1st of November. During Ignite Microsot announced that it will go into general availablity in December, so let’s cross out fingers Europe is included!

Windows Autopatch for frontline workers– Windows Autopatch is not new, but Windows Autopatch is now included in the Microsoft 365 F3 subscription to ensure frontline workers are kept up to date.

Windows Autopilot and Windows Update for Business merging – Microsoft is streamlining the interface to handle updates

Microsoft Intune

There were a few big announcements for Microsoft Intune, and I would say the two biggest were around macOS management, Security Copilot in Intune and the Intune Suite.

MacOS management – Microsoft has for a while now been very loud about their story around macOS and Intune, and we are now starting to see the outcome of this. I wouldn’t say that there were that much news related to Ignite around this, but they were pushing for that Intune is now in the forefront of device management for Mac, which means that you no longer need to have Jamf or such to have extensive macOS management.

Security Copilot for Intune – As part of the Copilot and Ai journey we are on, Security Copilot will help you dentify annomolies or issues in your environment. It will help you analyze big chunks of data in no time to find security related events. But Security Copilot is more than that, it will also integrate in Microsoft Intune to help you create new policies or figure out how to solve issues that arrises. This will be such a great feature for many admins out there!

Microsoft Intune suite updates – Microsoft Intune Suite was announced back in March this year and has so far mostly been focues on Endpoint Privilegde Management and Remote Help. Microsoft has now announced three more features that are coming; Enterprise App Management, Advanced Analytics and Cloud PKI. These three additional services will make the Intune Suite bundle even better and are expected to all be available in February of 2024.

Summary

To be honest, this years focus at Ignite was Copilot. The word “Copilot” is mentioned 289 times in the book of news. That kind of set the tone for Ignite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m super excited for Copilot but this year was crazy!

Any how, lot of cool stuff coming out of Ignite this year and I think we will see things moving even faster now around AI since post-Ignite there has been some news around people from OpenAI joining Microsoft… What a time to be alive!

One thing that I take with me is that next year, I want to go to Seattle and be there in person. My feeds has been filled with Ignite related pictures and the FOMO has been real!

Categories
Digital Transformation Intune Windows 365

Back from vacation – what did we miss?

Like the swede I am, I’ve been off work for the last 4 weeks to get my summer vacation. I’ve actually done my best to try to stay away from IT stuff this summer, to disconnect and focus on other things (like golf and getting our house in order).

But the world of IT does not slow down just because of summer, so here is a summary of some of the highlights that I missed during my time off!

I got renewed as MVP

Okay, this I already knew before the summer. But I was awarded for my 2nd year as an MVP within Windows and Devices for IT. I’m truly honored to be awarded for yet another year and being part of such a cool community of awesome people!

Ola Ström | Most Valuable Professionals (microsoft.com)

I will be speaking at WPNinja Summit

I was picked to do two session at the WPNinja Summit in Baden, Switzerland, the 27th to 29th of September.

I will do one session about Windows 365 networks and one about how to do better deployments of Windows 365.

I’m really looking forward to this and I hope to see you all there!

Windows 365 Switch in public preview

At Microsoft Ignite 2022, Microsoft introduced three big new features coming to Windows 365. In May, Windows 365 Boot reached public preview as the first of the three. Now in August, the second and maybe my favorite, Windows 365 Switch reached public preview!

Windows 365 Switch lets you switch between your physical PC and your Cloud PC through the task viewer, just like the other desktops you can have. It’s a really cool feature and I will cover this in a blogpost the upcoming weeks!

You can read more about it in the official Microsoft blogpost found here: Windows 365 Switch now available in public preview – Microsoft Community Hub

Windows 365 Frontline released

This was actually announced before I left for summer vacation, but Windows 365 Frontline finally reached general availability!

For those of you not familiar with this concept, this is a different licensing modell designed for scenarios where the users are not using their device all the time, user who work in shift where you have users coming an going. The concept is that you buy one license, but you get three Cloud PCs but only one can be used at the time.

It sounds a little bit tricky, I know, but I covered this in an earlier blog post which you can have a look at.

Read more about it in the Microsoft blogpost: Windows 365 Frontline is now generally available | Windows IT Pro Blog (microsoft.com)

What’s new in Windows 365?

Windows 365 got some other great updates during the summer as well as Microsoft released a lot of new features in both July and August.

Some of the new features released was:

  • Move Cloud PC is now generally available
  • New setting to allow users to reprovision their own Cloud PC
  • Azure network connection (ANC) least privilege update
  • Provide feedback button for admins is now generally available
  • Windows 365 web client camera support (preview)
  • Group-based license support for Cloud PC resizing
  • Windows 365 app update notifications for users

You can read more in details here about the new features: What’s new in Windows 365 Enterprise | Microsoft Learn

Windows 11 23h2 release update

Microsoft released new information about the Windows 11 23h2 update coming later this year. It is currently scheduled to be released in Q4 and will be released as an enablement package. This means that there are no big changes coming to the code base of Windows 11, and you can keep doing you testing on Windows 11 22h2 if you are still transitioning over to Windows 11.

Microsoft also mentions a Windows 11 LTSC version in this update, which means that if you are waiting for that release, you can start preparing.

Windows client roadmap update: July 2023 – Microsoft Community Hub

What’s new in Intune?

As per usual, Microsoft Intune has gotten it’s weekly updates during the summer. I think the most impactful update was the fact that uninstalling applications as an end-user in Company Portal is FINNALLY available! I know this has been something a lot of IT Pros has been waiting for. There are also a lot of new stuff in the 2307 Service release.

Some highlights:

  • Uninstall Win32 and Microsoft store apps using the Windows Company Portal
  • Use the Turn off the Store application setting to disable end user access to Store apps, and allow managed Intune Store apps
  • New BitLocker profile for Intune’s endpoint security Disk encryption policy
  • Intune supports new Google Play Android Management API
  • Change to default settings when adding Windows PowerShell scripts
  • New settings available for the iOS/iPadOS web clip app type
  • Settings insight within Intune Security Baselines is generally available
  • Tamper protection support for Windows on Azure Virtual Desktop
  • Endpoint Privilege Management support to manage elevation rules for child processes

What’s new in Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Learn

Screen capture protection and watermark

During the summer Microsoft updated how you can enable screen captrue protection and watermarks for Windows 365 (and Azure Virtual Desktop).

Previously, you had to upload a custom ADMX template to enable these settings (or GPO), but they have now been made available in the built-in ADMX profile in Intune, making this setting much more accessible.

I will cover this more in a future blog post

Azure Virtual Desktop Watermarking Support – Microsoft Community Hub

Screen capture protection in Azure Virtual Desktop – Azure | Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Inspire 2023

During the summer, Microsoft also held their Inspire conference which is usually more targeted towards partners, but there was a lot of good stuff announced and shared during the conference.

Check out the main keynote here: Microsoft Inspire Keynote

Any also the rest of the sessions: Session catalog (microsoft.com)