Getting started with Microsoft Cloud PKI

This week is sort of another follow-up on the earlier posts about new Microsoft Intune Suite add-on capabilities. This time it’s all about the latest addition, Microsoft Cloud PKI (Cloud PKI). Cloud PKI provides organizations with a cloud-based service that simplifies and automates the certificate lifecycle management for Intune managed devices. It literally provides a public key infrastructure (PKI) from the cloud. That PKI environment can be built within a few minutes, by simply going through a couple of wizards. Even when relying on at least a two-tier hierarchy, with a root certificate authority (CA) and an issuing CA. There is no longer a need to maintain on-premises servers, connectors, or hardware. Cloud PKI handles the certificate issuance, renewal, and revocation for Intune managed devices. …

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Adding company branding to Microsoft Edge for Business

This week is all about Microsoft Edge for Business and the new ability to add company branding. Microsoft Edge for Business is the new dedicated Microsoft Edge experience that is created for work accounts. It provides IT administrators with the capabilities to provide users with a productive and secure browsing experience across managed and unmanaged devices. That includes the ability to add company branding to the work account in Microsoft Edge for Business. Adding company branding can be especially useful for differentiating between multiple profiles in the browser. The company branding includes organization details like the company name in the profile pill, and the company color and logo in the profile flyout. Besides that, it’s even possible to add a logo to overlay the Microsoft …

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Getting started with Device query

This week is basically a follow-up on an earlier post about Advanced Analytics. At that time, it was all still in preview and still listening to the name of Advanced Endpoint Analytics. Advanced Analytics is also one of the latest additions to the Microsoft Intune Suite and it builds on top of those earlier previewed functionalities. On top of those features from the preview, Microsoft now also added Battery Health and Device query to the mix of features of Advanced Analytics. Even more insights and more options to actual query devices for information. Battery Health is a report that provides insights into the health of the batteries of the devices within the environment and how it influences the user experience. An interesting report, for even …

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Getting familiar with the Intune Management Extension log files

This week is another post about the Intune Management Extension (IME). This week the focus is on the log files of the IME. Probably not the most interesting subject, but definitely an important subject. Especially as an IT administrator, it’s important to be familiar with the available log files of the IME and to understand the usage of those log files. Besides that, it can also be interesting to be familiar with the configuration options for those log files. Together that will help with a better understanding of the logging capabilities of the IME and the log files that should be used to find the information related to a specific problem. This post will have a closer look at the IME log files and the …

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Understanding the Intune Management Extension client health check

This week is sort of a follow-up on the posts of the last couple of weeks about Win32 apps. This week, however, the focus is more on the process that is in place to make sure that everything around the Intune Management Extension (IME) keeps functioning. The IME contains many important components for installing Win32 apps, for running PowerShell scripts, for running inventories, and more. That makes it important that the IME is running successfully. To make sure that the IME is running successfully, the Intune Management Extension Health Evaluation was introduced. That evaluation is focused on performing checks on the service of the IME. This post will have a closer look at the IME client health check and the actions that it performs. Starting …

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Understanding Win32 app inventory

This week is another week about apps on Windows devices. The major difference with last week is that this week is all about the discovered apps on Windows devices. In other words, the app inventory on Windows devices. Within Microsoft Intune that inventory always used to be a huge challenge. It was often not complete and simply missing pieces. Nowadays, it’s getting more and more mature. It contains nearly all application types, is structurally inventoried, and is displayed in a (basic) report. Within Microsoft Intune that report is the Discovered apps report. That report contains a aggregated list of the discovered apps on the devices within the tenant. So, it acts as the software inventory within the tenant. This post will look at the process …

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Working with the restart grace period of Win32 apps

This week is sort of a follow-up on a post of years ago about working with the restart behavior of Win32 apps. That post was focussed on the behavior of Win32 apps, based on the return codes and the configured restart behavior. This post will add the restart grace period in that mix. The restart grace period can be used to determine after which time the device will actually require a restart, when required by the successful installation of a Win32 app. The configuration for the restart grace period has already been available for some time, but since recently it’s now also possible for non-administrator users to snooze that restart. This post will have a closer look at the configuration options for the restart grace …

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Getting started with the Global Secure Access client for Windows

This first week is all about the Global Secure Access client for Windows. Global Secure Access is the Security Service Edge (SSE) solution of Microsoft. Gartner defines SSE as a solution that secures access to the web, cloud services and private applications regardless of the location of the user or the device they are using or where that application is hosted. Within Global Secure Access, Microsoft introduced the (Microsoft Entra) Internet Access and (Microsoft Entra) Private Access products to provide that functionality. Of these products Internet Access is focused on secured access to Microsoft 365, SaaS, and public apps, while Private Access is focused on secured access to private or internal resources. The Global Secure Access client can be used to connect to the Global …

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Deploying and configuring the Azure VPN Client app on Windows devices

This week is all about deploying and configuring the Azure VPN Client app on Windows devices. The Azure VPN Client app can be used to connect to any Azure VPN gateway. That provides access to specific Azure virtual networks, even when working from a remote location. That can useful in many different situations. The great part is that, nowadays, the Azure VPN Client app can be deployed and configured by using Microsoft Intune. At least, when using Microsoft Entra ID for authentication. In that case, it’s possible to make it all automatically available to user. The only action left for the user is to authenticate. To achieve that, there are a few specific configurations required. This post will walk through the main configurations regarding the …

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Configuring Windows Hello for Business cloud Kerberos trust

This week is all about Windows Hello for Business. More specifically, about Windows Hello for Business cloud Kerberos trust. Not something really new, but definitely something that should be part of the default toolset. Hopefully familiar nowadays, Windows Hello for Business can be used to replace password sign-in with strong authentication on Windows. On top of that, Windows Hello for Business cloud Kerberos trust brings a simplified deployment experience for hybrid authentication with Windows Hello for Business. To provide that functionality, it relies on Microsoft Entra Kerberos for requesting Kerberos ticket-granting-tickets (TGTs). And those TGTs can then be used for on-premises authentication. A bing difference with other deployment models is the simplicity. No dependency on a public key infrastructure (PKI) and no need to synchronize …

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