Windows 10

Working with support approved elevations

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This week is all about highlighting some recent functionalities that have been introduced in Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM). The most important functionality is probably the newly supported file extensions of .msi and .ps1. That provides a larger footprint for EPM in the world of often elevated file extensions. The same experience as already known for executables. Besides that, there is more new functionality within EPM that might even be more powerful. That functionality is support approved elevations. Support approved elevations allow IT administrators to require approval before an elevation is allowed. That makes sure that when a user tries to run a file in an elevated context that the user is prompted to submit an elevation request. That request is sent to Intune for a …

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Understanding enrollment restrictions for Windows devices

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This week is a follow up to the post of last week. That post was focused on understanding corporate identifiers for Windows devices. A method to identify specific devices as corporate Windows devices, which is especially useful in combination with Windows Autopilot device preparation. This post will actually add-on to those corporate identifiers, by focusing on enrollment restrictions for Windows devices. Enrollment restrictions for Windows devices can be used to restrict devices from enrolling in Microsoft Intune. The main differentiators so far, however, were the ownership and OS version of the devices. But something changed in that area as well. With the assignment of device enrollment restrictions for Windows devices it’s now also possible to use specific filters. Using those filters provides more granularity in …

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Understanding corporate identifiers for Windows devices

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This week is sort of a follow up to the post of last week. That post was focused on understanding enrollment time grouping in Windows Autopilot device preparation. This post will focus on corporate identifiers for Windows devices. Corporate device identifiers are an important, but not required, addition to the Windows Autopilot device preparation experience. As the concept of Windows Autopilot device preparation is slightly different compared to the Windows Autopilot deployment profiles, there are also different requirements to still register a device as a corporate device. There is no longer the requirement to register devices with the Windows Autopilot deployment service. That, however, also means that there must be something different to make sure that only trusted devices can go through the Windows Autopilot …

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Getting started with the Remote Help web app

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This week is all about the Remote Help web app. Remote Help on itself is nothing new, but it does have an often overlooked feature that can be useful in multiple occasions. That feature is the Remote Help web app. The Remote Help web app can be used to help users on managed and unmanaged devices, without installing the Remote Help app, and in some scenarios even on Linux devices. The former might sound a little bit weird, but due to the nature of the web app, it does technically work in some scenarios to provide support on Linux. Together that makes the Remote Help web app an interesting feature to be familiar with. It is good to know that the web app only supports …

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Smoothly introducing new feature updates for Windows 11 as optional updates

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This week is all about a new method to smoothly introduce a new feature update within the organization. That new method is the ability to create a feature update deployment policy with the option to make the new feature update available as an optional update. By making the latest feature update, or any other feature update that eventually must be deployed, available as an optional update, the user is still in control of actually installing the update. That leaves the IT administrator in control of making the feature update available and the user in control of the installation. Doing that, adds an easy step to smoothly introducing a new feature update in the organization. Besides a smooth process, this also provides an easy start when …

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Combining the different layers of data security on personal Windows devices

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This week is a continuation of my previous blog post about working with personal Windows devices. That post was focussed on the different options available for providing secure access to corporate data on personal Windows devices. This post is focussed on providing more details around using those different options actually as different layers in a single solution. All with the focus on providing secure access to corporate data on personal Windows devices, while still providing the user with as much flexibility and options to be productive. Besides that, using different layers of data security also enables the IT administrators to add more granularity to the solution. That makes the total solution less black-and-white. So, for example, not just block the ability of the user to …

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Working with personal Windows devices

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This week is kind of a follow up on my post of a couple of weeks ago about why enrolling personal Windows devices might be a really bad idea. That post was focussed on advising against allowing enrolling personal Windows devices into Microsoft Intune (or any other MDM provider). The logic follow up question would be: what are the alternatives? And that’s of course a fair question. This post will be about answering that specific question. And to be quite honest, the answer might come very close to a blog post of about four years around supporting unsupported platforms. The main difference will be what Microsoft has provided over the years. And that’s a lot, especially for the Windows platform. This post will focus on …

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Why enrolling personal Windows devices might be a really bad idea

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This week is basically a brief follow-up on one of my sessions at the Modern Endpoint Management Summit 2024. More specifically, my session about Protecting corporate data on personal Windows devices – Your options. During that session I went into a bit more detail about the discussion that I started earlier on Twitter/X around enrolling personal Windows devices. My opinion around that might be lightly biased from what I’ve seen over the years, but I do think that I can provide some insights into why I think that it’s not a good idea to enroll personal Windows devices. In this blog post, I’ll provide a short summary of what I’ve shared during my session. It’s good to have an opinion, but it’s even better to …

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Quick tip: Only turn off notifications network usage when there is a direct requirement

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This week is a relatively short post, mainly focused on providing a warning around turning off notifications network usage on Windows devices. Turning off notifications network usage can be used to prevent applications from using the notifications network the send notifications. No matter if that notification is a tile update, tile badge, toast, or any raw updates. It basically turns off the connection between Windows and the Windows Push Notification Services (WNS). WNS enables third-party developers to send those notifications. It provides a mechanism to deliver updates to users and devices in a power-efficient and dependable way. The important thing, however, is to keep in mind that WNS is not only used by third-party developers. It’s also used by many different Microsoft products, including Microsoft …

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Looking closer at enabling Endpoint analytics

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This week is all about Endpoint analytics and indirectly Advanced Analytics. More specifically, about enabling Endpoint Analytics and what happens after enabling Endpoint analytics. The process of enabling Endpoint analytics is not that special and can only be performed once per tenant. It is, however, good to be familiar with what happens after enabling Endpoint analytics. To understand the settings that become available and the impact of adjusting those settings. Especially the impact for the Windows devices within the environment. Besides that, it’s also important to be familiar with configurations that are not directly part of Endpoint analytics, but that do influence the results provided by Endpoint analytics. This post will focus on exactly those subjects! This post will provide an overview of what enabling …

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