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  • 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…

  • Installing Windows updates during a Windows Autopilot deployment

    It’s not uncommon to want a device to have the latest security updates installed before the device can be used.  One of these days we’ll add that capability to the Windows Autopilot process, built in so you don’t need to do much, if anything, to enable that.  But until then, it’s not too hard to…

  • Windows Autopilot and ESP now work with Windows Hello for Business certs

    Some of you reported that you were trying to provision new devices using Windows Autopilot with ESP enabled, and were running into issues when trying to deploy Windows Hello for Business (useful for single sign-on scenarios) via Intune and SCEP.  The challenge: ESP would be waiting for the certs to install before Windows Hello for…

  • New Enrollment Status Page option available

    The enrollment status page (ESP) is something I highly recommend you implement, to ensure each device is fully provisioned before the user can get to the desktop.  It makes sure the device is sufficiently configured before the user is able to try to use the device. That said, there have been some challenges with ESP…

  • Use Intune to enable Delivery Optimization for Office 365 installs

    Just yesterday, I posted a blog about trying out Delivery Optimization for Office 365 ProPlus installs.  It was something I put together quickly, during a break while presenting at a SCUG Norway event in Oslo.  Fast forward to this morning, where I had an e-mail in my inbox saying “perhaps you might want to do…

  • Try out Delivery Optimization with Office 365 ProPlus installations

    One of the challenges with cloud-based content delivery (e.g. Intune deploying apps, Windows Update delivering updates, Microsoft Store updating apps):  You really don’t want each client downloading the content from the cloud, because internet bandwidth is not unlimited, and download speeds can vary.  If we all had internet connections like the Microsoft office in Redmond…

  • Interpreting the Windows Autopilot profile

    You’re probably used to looking at Windows Autopilot profiles in Intune.  But most of the time, I’m looking at one from the CAB file that is created by the MDMDiagnosticsTool.  As I noted in my previous log, these CAB files contain several files, including the AutopilotDDSZTDFile.json that contains all the Autopilot profile settings.  But those…

  • Troubleshooting Windows Autopilot, a reference

    I’ve done a variety of blogs on troubleshooting Windows Autopilot, which you can read up on for historical reference: Troubleshooting Windows AutoPilot (level 100/200) Troubleshooting Windows AutoPilot (level 300/400) Troubleshooting Improvements in Windows Autopilot TPM Attestation: What can possibly go wrong? And there are troubleshooting notes in several other blogs as well.  And yet, reading…

  • Working with UEFI variables from PowerShell

    In my past post about the inner workings of UEFI, I talked about using a UEFI shell to poke around, looking at all the UEFI variables that are defined on a typical system.  As part of that blog post, I published a PowerShell script to get the value of a particular UEFI variable, but it…

  • Password-less Azure AD Join can be done

    As I was trying out FIDO2 support in Windows 10 (see my blog here), I was disappointed that the one thing that I couldn’t do with the FIDO2 key was to join a device to Azure AD.  For that, I still needed to use a username (UPN/e-mail address) and password.  This is on the roadmap,…

  • Inside Windows Autopilot self-deploying mode

    In past blog posts, I walked through the user-driven scenarios – both user-driven Azure AD Join and user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join.  Now on to scenario #3, self-deploying mode.  In many ways, this seems like a simple scenario.  But there are some interesting twists. First, let’s talk about the requirements, from the official documentation (which,…