ConfigMgr 2012

New tool: Remote Mobile Device Manager

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This blog post will be about a new tool, written in PowerShell, to remotely manage mobile devices. This tool is based on the ConfigMgr SDK and contains all the available options for remotely managing mobile devices. That means it can retire, wipe, lock and pin reset mobile devices. Basically, it’s a version 2.0 of the tool I made a couple of months ago. That tool is limited to the ConfigMgr 2012 R2 functionality, of wipe and retire, and this new tool also contains the ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 functionality, of lock and pin reset. The use case for this tool is still the same. In most cases the service desk is responsible for helping end-users with their mobile devices. What if the company rather not …

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Invoke remote device actions via PowerShell

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This will be a short blog post about a the newly introduced WMI class, in the latest service pack, called SMS_DeviceAction. As I’m currently working on a new tool to remotely manage mobile devices, which will be released soon, I noticed that the SMS_DeviceAction class is used to invoke and query the Lock and PinReset actions. What’s even more important is the fact that the SMS_DeviceAction class isn’t documented, yet. In this blog post I’ll post the required information to successfully query the SMS_DeviceAction class and to successfully invoke the methods of the SMS_DeviceAction class. Methods The SMS_DeviceAction class contains the method InvokeAction. The InvokeAction method requires the following input parameters. Parameter Data Type Description Action String This parameter is required and should contain the …

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Pick your Company Portal app

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This weekend I posted a small tweet showing the tabs, in my browser, to the different Company Portal apps. In that same tweet I promised the overview that follows in this blog post. By now there are 8 different versions of the Company Portal app and specific to Microsoft Intune that number is 7. These Company Portal apps differ in things like product, platform and availability. This blog post will describe the different Company Portal apps, their platforms, their usage, their main requirements, their availability and, if needed, their important notes. All that information should help you with picking the right version of the Company Portal app and all that information can be found in the following table. Company Portal app More information Configuration Manager …

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Windows Phone 8.1 and the Windows Phone Store

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This blog post will be about the other magical store world of Windows Phone 8.1 and that’s the world of the Windows Phone Store. By now, I think many are already aware of the different possibilities for the Windows Phone Store, but I thought it would be time for a complete overview like I did for Windows Phone 8.1 and the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app. This post will contain the different scenarios for providing (limited) access to the Windows Phone Store. These scenarios will be explained for Microsoft Intune standalone and Microsoft Intune hybrid. Scenarios Now lets start with summarizing the different scenarios that are possible for providing (limiting) access to the Windows Phone Store. I found the following three scenarios and I’ll go …

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Manage Windows Defender, of Windows 10, via OMA-DM

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A couple of weeks ago I did a blog post about the different management options for Windows 8.1. In that specific post I already mentioned OMA-DM as a very valid method to manage Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 devices. To refresh the memories, OMA Device Management (OMA-DM) is an open management standard designed for mobile devices. The nice thing is that OMA-DM is also fully utilized in Windows 10, even the desktop version. That means that OMA-DM can be used to fully manage specific parts of a Windows 10 device. In this post I’ll show how OMA-DM can be used to fully manage Windows Defender in Windows 10. For Windows 10 it’s possible to manage all the settings available for Windows Defender. This includes everything, …

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How to use the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app for Windows Phone 8.1 from the Download Center

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A bit more than a month ago Microsoft released the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app specifically for Windows Phone 8.1 in the Download Center. This version of the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app is created specifically for Windows Phone 8.1 and later, as it’s created in the APPX format, which is not supported by Windows Phone 8. It can be used by administrators to deploy to end-users who do not have access to the Windows Phone Store. The main feature of this version of the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app is the ability to show the configured Terms and Conditions in Microsoft Intune standalone. In this blog post I’ll describe how this version of the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app can be signed and how …

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Windows 8.1 and the different management options

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In this blog post I would like to address a topic that’s often forgotten in the mobile devices management discussion. That topic is based on the question, “How are we going to manage the Windows 8.1 devices?”. Yes, I know, technically speaking a Windows 8.1 device is not a mobile device, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t treat it like one. In this blog post I’ll go through the different management options for Windows 8.1 from a Microsoft Intune standalone and a Microsoft Intune hybrid perspective. Also, I will provide an overview of the related management prerequisites, from both perspectives, and I’ll show the end-user enrollment possibilities. Management options The introduction of Microsoft Intune introduced a lot of management options for all the iOS, …

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Automagically set the mobile device owner to company

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Before I’ll start with this blog post I would like to say thank you to Kim Oppalfens, for his great suggestion to look at WMI Eventing. I didn’t know that it was that versatile and powerful! Thanks Kim! Scenario The scenario for this post is actually quite simple and is applicable to an environment with Microsoft Intune integrated with ConfigMgr. By default, the device owner of a mobile device is set to Personal and that’s not always the desired value. A lot of customers still provide their employees with (mobile) devices and want the tooling to reflect that information. This blog post will provide an automagic method to set the mobile device owner to Company, by default. The best thing is that it’s still possible …

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Store accounts and the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app

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In this blog post I will answer a question that I get, with a lot of customers, and that’s if it’s required for end-users to have an account for the app store, of their platform, to download the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app. The app store that I mean here is can be the Google Play app store, the Apple app store,  the Windows Phone app store or the Windows app store. All these stores match with their platform and require their own store account to download apps. Before I can answer the initial question, I first have to answer another question. That question is if it’s required to use the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app, simply because a store account is not required if …

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Windows Phone 8.1 and the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app

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This blog post will be about the magical world of Windows Phone 8.1 and the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app. More specifically, about Windows Phone 8.1 and the two Microsoft Intune Company Portal apps. The Microsoft Intune Company Portal app of the Windows Phone Store and the Microsoft Intune Company Portal app deployed via either Microsoft Intune or ConfigMgr. Yes, I know there was recently a KB article released about the same subject. In this post I’ll go through more scenarios and I’ll go in more detail about the possible solutions and the pro’s and cons of those solutions. Scenarios Now lets start with summarizing the different scenarios that are possible with the combination of Microsoft Intune, ConfigMgr, Windows Phone 8.1 and the Microsoft Intune …

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