Microsoft Intune

The first article about my familiarization with Microsoft Intune solution for managing corporate and private devices with different operating system. A very brief description of what Intune is, what the licenses are, and how to do the initial setup. Then we'll look at how to get Windows 10 or 11 devices into Intune management, i.e. how to enroll them (Enroll). We'll describe some of the methods in more detail. The main focus is on enterprise devices in a Hybrid Azure AD Join environment.

After a light introduction to Intune and registering Windows devices, in the second part we will look at how to register (Enroll) macOS devices. Again, these can be both corporate and private devices. There are fewer methods available in this case. We will describe both manual registration using Company Portal and automated registration using Apple Business Manager.

In the third section on Microsoft Intune, we'll look at configuring properties and settings for managed devices. Intune allows you to configure a huge number of settings (most for Windows). There are several ways to configure it. The main thing is to think about what we want to configure, then we choose the appropriate method (the documentation will help us with the details). The second question is whether to apply the settings to the device or to the user.

In the fourth part about Microsoft Intune, we will look at the second basic functionality, which is application management. In this part, we will focus on installing applications. Other areas, such as application configuration and security, may be covered next time. Application installation is a very broad area. Due to the fact that we have a wide range of platforms and types of applications (installation options) as well as target devices. Let's try to describe general things. Next, we'll focus (still briefly) on Windows and macOS. We won't cover Android and iOS mobile platforms too much in this article, where a number of specific areas are growing (and also BYOD, for example).

With Intune, we can control the installation of updates on macOS devices (but in a much more limited way than on Windows). We can create profiles for update policies that deploy updates to devices and/or configure operating system update settings. These can be major and minor operating system updates, application updates, configuration files or firmware updates.

Intune offers several options to manage the installation of updates on Windows devices. Windows Update for Business is used. For configuration within Intune, we most often use Update Rings, where we create several groups and install updates with gradual delays. For Windows version updates, we can use the newer Feature Updates Policy. There are other options, such as Windows Autopatch, that are barely covered here.