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  • Year in review: Random blog statistics

    With my blog hosted through WordPress.com, there are all sorts of analytics available to tell me the blogs I’ve posted and the people that are reading them.  Here are some interesting tidbits from those analytics. All total, the blogs I posted in 2019 include over 51,000 words.  Not including images, that would be the equivalent…

  • Year in review: Samples, scripts, tools

    Some of the blogs that I’ve posted are tied to scripts posted to the PowerShell Gallery or tools published to GitHub (or sometimes a combination of the two).  In the case of the scripts, it’s fairly easy to see download counts, so here’s Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo.  Technically this one was around before this year (written while I…

  • Year in review: Blog posts

    It’s been a fairly busy year for blogging, crossing three different blog platforms.  First there was https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mniehaus, with two posts in January 2019: USB media and Windows Information Protection.  If you’ve implemented Windows Information Protection and it keeps messing up your USB boot media, here’s how to fix it. New version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit…

  • Configuring time zones, part 2

    As I mentioned in the preview blog, RFC 4833 describes a mechanism that delivers time zone information via DHCP, but Windows 10 doesn’t include a mechanism for automatically consuming this information.  But that doesn’t mean it can’t be used – it just requires some extra work.  The first challenge is adding the needed options to…

  • Configuring time zones, part 1

    I always wondered why setting time zones was so hard.  Shouldn’t devices be able to figure this out themselves?  For devices like cell phones, this is pretty simple (now at least, since we have digital cell phone services rather than analog ones) as this can be provided directly by the cell network provider (although be…

  • Following the ConfigMgr task sequence bootstrap process

    In my previous blog, I talked about how you could have Intune automatically run a ConfigMgr task sequence during a Windows Autopilot deployment.  For those of you who wanted more information on how this works, here’s some additional details. First, you’ve seen the command line parameters passed into the CCMSETUP.MSI: CCMSETUPCMD=”/nocrlcheck /UsePKICert /mp:https://CONTOSOCM.CONTOSOCM.COM/CCM_Proxy_MutualAuth/72057594037927953  CCMHOSTNAME=CONTOSOCM.CONTOSOCM.COM/CCM_Proxy_MutualAuth/72057594037927953 SMSSiteCode=PRI…

  • Run a ConfigMgr task sequence via Windows Autopilot and Intune

    I’ve mentioned in presentations over the past couple of years that the first thing I tried to do with Windows Autopilot was to run a task sequence, bridging the old and the new.  The idea is simple enough:  Autopilot joins the device to Azure AD or Active Directory and enrolls it in Intune; Intune installs…

  • Updated WindowsAutopilotPartnerCenter module posted

    If you are a CSP partner looking to add devices on behalf of your customers using the Partner Center APIs (you can read my original blog on the topic), you may have noticed that version 1.0 of the WindowsAutopilotPartnerCenter module no longer worked with the latest PartnerCenter module, due to changes made to the authentication…

  • App-based authentication with Intune

    A while back, support for app-based authentication was added for Intune, enabling an app to authenticate and use the Graph API.  That’s mentioned in the Intune documentation, along with the steps to create an app.  Between that documentation, and the similar Graph documentation, you can figure out how to set up an app.  But the…

  • The importance of time

    Before you think I’m going off on a philosophical tangent, let me assure you that I have a point to make, and it is indeed about the importance of time.  More specifically, it’s about the importance of having accurate time – every device being deployed by Windows Autopilot needs to have a “reasonably-accurate” time on…

  • Windows Autopilot Companion app updated to support editing the computer name and group tag

    If you missed yesterday’s announcement, we enabled editing the computer name and group tag associated with a Windows Autopilot device.  You can change those values through the Intune portal now, and you can use the updated WindowsAutopilotIntune module to update them using PowerShell and the Graph API.  That leaves one additional place where it would…

  • Now you can edit group tags and computer names for Windows Autopilot devices

    It’s something that we’ve talked about for a while, and it’s now available.  If you navigate to an existing Windows Autopilot device in the Intune device management portal, you can edit the device to set the group tag and computer name values: Since the Intune portal is built on top of the Graph API, that…

  • It’s only a matter of time…

    Somewhere around 15 years ago, I can remember building out an Exchange 2003 infrastructure – unpacking boxes, setting up servers (I still have my trusty toolkit – can’t assemble servers without a good set of tools), installing Windows Server and all the needed features, installing Exchange, setting up backups, testing everything out, then spending weeks…

  • Using a wireless network connection with Windows Autopilot white glove

    As part of our Windows Autopilot white glove documentation, we state that Ethernet connectivity is required “due to the requirement to choose a language, locale, and keyboard to make that Wi-fi connection; doing that in a pre-provisioning process could prevent the user from choosing their own language, locale, and keyboard when they receive the device.” …

  • Windows Autopilot health check: An experiment in Graph API scripting

    We have talked to a number of customers over the past months who have run into challenges with Windows Autopilot – sometimes these were simple configuration issues, other times they were self-inflicted pains (e.g. deleting Azure AD device objects associated with a registered Windows Autopilot device).  But as we learn more about the types of…

  • Following up from Microsoft Ignite

    I posted a blog with the Microsoft Ignite sessions that I thought would be interesting for anyone working with Windows Autopilot.  Now, those same session links point to the video recordings of all of the sessions.  A few key items to call out: Windows Autopilot user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join will add support for deploying…

  • Multi-tenant Intune Graph API usage via PowerShell

    I mentioned in my previous blog about the WindowsAutopilotIntune module that I had switched the module over to using the Microsoft.Graph.Intune module so that the same authentication logic could be used across the Intune and Autopilot modules.  Coincidentally, someone at the same time asked how to get that module to connect to an Intune tenant…

  • What’s new with the WindowsAutopilotIntune PowerShell module

    Some of you have noticed that the WindowsAutopilotIntune module is working differently than it did before, mainly due to the Connect-AutopilotIntune cmdlet disappearing from the module.  There’s a good reason for that:  The module had previously used its own authentication logic, which then meant that you needed to authenticate twice if you wanted to do…

  • Windows Autopilot at Microsoft Ignite

    Next week will be a busy week, with a significant portion of the Windows Autopilot program management team attending.  There are a few Windows Autopilot sessions planned.  First let me plug the sessions that I’ll be presenting in: Modern Windows 10 and Office 365 deployment with Windows Autopilot, Desktop Analytics, Microsoft Intune, and Configuration Manager. …

  • Deploy the new Microsoft Edge preview using Intune

    There’s a new app type in Intune to make deploying the Microsoft Edge preview as easy as possible.  You can add a new app and choose the Microsoft Edge, version 77 and later app type as described in the Intune documentation.  All you need to specify is the name and description, as well as the…