Microsoft Intune Cookbook
Description
- Implement and enforce compliance, security, and application policies to streamline device management
- Manage Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS devices seamlessly with Intune
- Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
Book DescriptionMicrosoft Intune is a powerful cloud-managed mobile device management (MDM) tool that empowers you to manage your end-user device estate across various platforms. While it is an excellent platform, the initial setup and configuration can be a daunting process, and mistakes made early on can be more challenging to resolve later. This book addresses these issues by guiding you through the end-to-end configuration of an Intune environment, incorporating best practices and utilizing the latest functionalities. In addition to setting up your environment, you'll delve into the Microsoft Graph platform to understand the underlying mechanisms behind the web GUI. This knowledge will enable you to automate a significant portion of your daily tasks using PowerShell. By the end of this book, you'll have established an Intune environment that supports Windows, Apple iOS, Apple macOS, and Android devices. You'll possess the expertise to add new configurations, policies, and applications, tailoring an environment to your specific requirements. Additionally, you'll have the ability to troubleshoot any issues that may arise and package and deploy your company applications. Overall, this book is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn how to use Microsoft Intune to manage their organization's end-user devices.What you will learn - Set up your Intune tenant and associated platform connections
- Deploy and manage security and compliance policies of your organization's devices
- Package, deploy, and update your applications using Intune
- Monitor, report, and troubleshoot your environment with advanced tools
- Leverage PowerShell to automate your daily tasks
- Understand the underlying workings of the Microsoft Graph platform and how it interacts with Intune
Who this book is forThis book is for IT professionals, end-user device administrators, and system administrators looking to implement, optimize, or automate Microsoft Intune. Whether you're transitioning from on-premises management to cloud-based endpoint security or seeking to enhance your existing Intune deployment, this book provides practical solutions, automation strategies, and best practices to make device management seamless.
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Person
Andrew Taylor is an End-User Compute architect with 20 years IT experience across industries and a particular interest in Microsoft Cloud technologies, PowerShell and Microsoft Graph. Andrew graduated with a degree in Business Studies in 2004 from Lancaster University and since then has obtained numerous Microsoft certifications including Microsoft 365 Enterprise Administrator Expert, Azure Solutions Architect Expert and Cybersecurity Architect Expert amongst others. He currently working as an EUC Architect for an IT Company in the United Kingdom, planning and automating the products across the EUC space. Andrew lives on the coast in the North East of England with his wife and two daughters.
Content
- Configuring Your New Tenant for Windows Devices
- Securing Your Windows Devices with Security Policies
- Setting Up Enrollment and Updates for Windows
- Android Device Management
- Apple iOS Device Management
- macOS Device Management
- Setting Up Your Compliance Policies
- Monitoring Your New Environment
- Looking at Reporting
- Packaging Your Windows Applications
- PowerShell Scripting Across Intune
- Tenant Administration
- Looking at Intune Suite
Preface
Microsoft Intune is a market-leading Mobile Device Management (MDM) tool for securely managing your Apple iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows devices anywhere in the world.
With the rapid move to hybrid working and more employees now wanting flexibility, traditional device management tools such as Active Directory are limited for staff working outside of the office, without implementing complicated Always On VPN.
As Microsoft Intune is fully cloud-based, devices can be managed comprehensively from any location. This can be further improved by implementing Windows Autopilot for machine provisioning, and devices can be shipped directly to end users with no input required from the IT department.
Configuring your new environment to work reliably can be a daunting task with multiple options to configure settings, and this is where Microsoft Intune Cookbook can help, running through every stage, from purchasing your licenses to enrolling your devices in a working environment.
On top of this, automation is a key part of working with IT systems; automating a repeatable task reduces the risk of user error as well as significantly improving productivity. As well as demonstrating how to configure your environment in the web portal, this book will also show you how to leverage Microsoft PowerShell and Microsoft Graph to automate your daily tasks. For this purpose, several recipes have an Automating it section included.
Included at the following URL are links to some excellent community resources, which are worth reading and following as you embark on your Intune journey:
https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Microsoft-Intune-Cookbook/blob/main/blogs-links-communities.md
Note that during the writing of this book, Microsoft renamed Azure Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID, so there may be occasions where the old Azure Active Directory naming is used, especially in screenshots where the portals had not been updated.
Who this book is for
This book is ideal for anyone either starting out on their Intune journey or existing Intune users who want to learn Microsoft Graph for automation.
This could be system administrators, end-user computer administrators, cloud administrators, or even support staff looking to take the next step up the ladder.
As it is a hands-on cookbook, while it touches on architectural considerations, the primary demographic is technical staff who are implementing a solution.
While the book does not cover the basics of PowerShell scripting, you should be able to follow the scripts with a limited knowledge of PowerShell commands.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Microsoft Intune, is an introduction to Intune. It takes a look at licensing requirements and setting up the first tenant. It then moves onto Entra ID, covering MDM and Mobile Application Management (MAM) enrollment scopes, the creation of both static and dynamic groups, and then assigning roles and looking at device settings.
Chapter 2, Configuring Your New Tenant for Windows Devices, looks at the policy options available for Windows devices and how to use them to comprehensively manage your Windows fleet.
Chapter 3, Securing Your Windows Devices with Security Policies, covers all the important security policies available for Windows devices and how to best configure them for your environment.
Chapter 4, Setting Up Enrollment and Updates for Windows, looks at Windows Update and autopatch, configuring Windows Hello for Business, before finally looking at the enrollment of devices using Autopilot and the Enrollment Status Page (ESP).
Chapter 5, Android Device Management, covers the management of your Android devices using Google Play. It runs through the full end-to-end process of configuring your managed Google Play account, connecting it to Intune, and using it to deploy applications. After configuring the connections, the chapter will run through configuring your enrollment profiles for different use cases and then move on to the policies themselves, including looking at Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) specific policies. Finally, it will cover the use of app protection policies for Bring your Own Device (BYOD) scenarios.
Chapter 6, Apple iOS Device Management, looks at the management of both iOS and macOS devices from Apple, with devices managed by Apple Business Manager and Apple Volume Purchase Program for applications. After running through configuring Apple Business Manager, the chapter then demonstrates how to connect it to Intune, add the required certificates, and set up enrollment profile tokens. Once the basic environment is configured, it moves on to configuring policies and deploying (and protecting) applications from the app store for iOS.
Chapter 7, macOS Device Management, continues the Apple journey with macOS devices. It covers configuring your first policy and then deploying scripts and applications to your devices, before finally looking at keeping your macOS up to date.
Chapter 8, Setting Up Your Compliance Policies, explores the very important, but often overlooked, area of compliance. When tied to Conditional access, it is the best way to secure your environment against risky/infected machines. The chapter covers configuring compliance policies for all currently supported operating systems and the various settings available for each. For Windows devices, it also dives into the more complex but powerful custom compliance policies. Finally, it demonstrates how to link your compliance policies to a Conditional access policy.
Chapter 9, Monitoring Your New Environment, runs through the monitoring options available within Intune. It looks at monitoring your applications (both installed and detected) and your critical app protection policies and then moves on to the devices. In device monitoring, you can learn how to review the success of your configuration profiles, device compliance, and device enrollment successes and failures. The chapter will then look at checking your device update status and, finally, review any admin tasks within the portal itself, including device actions and audit logs for policy/app changes.
Chapter 10, Looking at Reporting, covers all of the available reports within Intune initially, including security and Endpoint analytics. It then moves beyond Intune, covering connecting PowerBI to the Intune Data Warehouse and deploying Windows Update for Business Reports within an Azure Log Analytics Workspace. Finally, it will cover how to export your diagnostics events to Azure for further alerting or management.
Chapter 11, Packaging Your Windows Applications, examines application packaging and deployment, which can be a blocker to many. The chapter runs through deploying all Windows applications, starting with your straightforward Microsoft Store apps and then covering packaging in the MSIX or Win32 format, using the official Microsoft tools. It also covers application dependencies and supersedence for Win32 applications.
Chapter 12, PowerShell Scripting across Intune, looks at all of the available scripts inside Intune, starting with the basic device scripts. It will then move on to the very useful proactive remediations before looking at how they can be used when deploying apps - in particular, during detection and requirement checking.
Chapter 13, Tenant Administration, runs through the options within the Tenant Administrative menu within Intune, including your day-to-day admin tasks (monitoring connectors, troubleshooting, and version checking). It also covers the more set-once options such as terms and conditions, setting roles, and customizing. Finally, it covers using filters to manage assignments, sending organizational messages, and looking at multi-admin approval.
Chapter 14, Looking at Intune Suite, looks at the additional licensed features currently included in the Intune Suite. We will look at Remote Help, Microsoft Tunnel for Android/iOS, device anomalies, and Endpoint Privilege Management.
To get the most out of this book
For the sections on automation, you will need a machine capable of running PowerShell; version 5 or version 7 will work fine. While you can simply download and run the scripts, using an editor will aid in following the steps.
Software/hardware covered in the book
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