Microsoft Intune – Administrative Templates

Continuing in track with Microsoft journey to move everyone to the cloud, Microsoft announced in the past days, a new Intune feature that was in public preview for a while and definitely one of my most anticipated ones.

Until now, this was for me one of the biggest drawbacks about Intune and cloud device management for Windows devices.

Administrative Templates is the (real) first step for SysAdmins to start moving Windows 10 settings from on-premises group policies to cloud-base settings.

With Intune Administrative Templates, we get the best things of GPOs merged with the goods of a cloud solution.

To know more about the new Microsoft Intune Administrative Templates, click below for the Tech Community post:

Tech Community - Microsoft Intune announces general availability of administrative templates

Office 365 ProPlus Update History

This is just a quick post if you ever need to know the update history for Microsoft Office 365.
This listings include information about dates, what was updates on each update channel, etc

Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus Update History

Office 365 – Versions and Update Channels – Registry Information

Because Microsoft Office 365 is a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) like almost everything on Microsoft nowadays, it is continuously updating and getting better.

As a SysAdmin on an enterprise, you may want to have some kind of control about when updates occur, which machines receive the new updates first, etc.

Additionally, you may want to have a view of the installed versions, update channels, etc on your software management suite or simply need to query a machine to get this information.
All of this can be found in registry so, here’s a quick look where to find them:

Registry Path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration

Keys

• ClientVersionToReport
  Current installed Office 365 client version
• UpdateChannel / CDNBaseUrl
  Sets the update channel configuration:

• Current Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/492350f6-3a01-4f97-b9c0-c7c6ddf67d60

• Deferred Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/7ffbc6bf-bc32-4f92-8982-f9dd17fd3114

• First Release for Current Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/64256afe-f5d9-4f86-8936-8840a6a4f5be

• First Release for Deferred Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/b8f9b850-328d-4355-9145-c59439a0c4cf

There’s a lot more to explore but this ones gives you a lot of information about your installed versions and update configuration.

New Microsoft Edge with Chromium (Edgium) is getting ready for business

With the new Microsoft Edge getting a good feedback from users and a very fast paced development, Microsoft announced today a new very important step.

Because enterprise/business means a lot to Microsoft, they’re trying to get back on track and regain some market share that they loose to Chrome on the enterprise environment. So it’s really nice to see that since today a set of new features are getting available:

• Internet Explorer Mode
• This is something similar to IE Enterprise Mode, but all the magic happens inside the same browser. So, instead of the user gets redirected from Edge to IE, now it opens in single browser with IE compatibility
• Offline deployment package
• This is fundamental for enterprise environment so, MSI and PKG are now available for download
• Group Policies for Windows and MAC
• Again, something fundamental for enterprises to control features and behavior. A note here, although not just yet but, MDM and Intune support is on the roadmap

So, to take a look at a full list of features and downloads follow this link:
Microsoft Edge - Enterprise

SetupDiag – Know what went wrong with your Windows 10 upgrade

With no whistles and fireworks, Microsoft launch a tiny but very useful tool to analyze what went wrong with your Windows 10 update.

SetupDiag is a standalone diagnostic tool that can be used to obtain details about why Windows 10 upgrade wasn’t successful.
It analyzes the Windows Setup logs and tries to parse them trying to obtain a single log file that tells you where’s the issue.

Download and read more about it here:
Microsoft - SetupDiag Tool

One Insider to rule them all!

Since Satya Nadella become Microsoft’s CEO, a lot has change there.
One of the most important one’s was the way Microsoft started to communicate with consumers (and “old rivals” by the way).

In a more open strategy, Windows Insider was a trademark of Windows 10. Allowing users to shape the future of the most used operating system in the world was a bold step and a necessary one at the same time.
This allowed Microsoft to get almost instant feedback and telemetry about what they were doing right or wrong and also create an even more passionate community.

After Windows 10 a lot of other Insider Programs appeared and a lot of times was difficult to keep the pace of how many Insider Programs were out there.

So…thinking about this, Microsoft launched a new website that groups all the Insider Programs in one place.
Although it uses a very simple and basic design, the goal here is facilitate users life.

So go ahead and take a look at:
Insider Programs at Microsoft