Recast’s Endpoint Management Recap – Dec 2019

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! Welcome to a special Holiday Edition of the Recast Endpoint Management Recap (REMR).

Episode two of a monthly edition of recent updates, news and helpful resources for the ConfigMgr community. Highlights from the last month will include:

• Events / Conference News
• Microsoft Product Announcements
• Hardware Vendor Updates (Tools / Security / Features)
• Community Tools / News
• Recast Updates

That’s the idea, a high level overview of things going on that you’ll want to be aware of and you can dig into them further on your own.

Events & Conferences

This month, I didn’t find any Conferences focusing on End Points, or Systems Management. However, there was a lot of Local User Groups, with many great topics.

• AZSMUG:  Arizona’s User Group (Phoenix) -Michael Niehaus – What’s New with Autopilot & Andrew Jimenez – MMSJE Recap
• PDXCMUG: Portland’s User Group – 3rd Party Patching
• MEMUG: Denver’s User Group – Mike Terrill & Gary Blok – WaaS / IPU [YOUTUBE RECORDING]
• TCSMUG: Minnesota’s (Twin Cities) User Group. – Ryan Ephgrave – Going deep into ConfigMgr status messages

There are a lot of user groups, not every group meets every month, but there are a lot of ways to get plugged in, meet peers, make connections, and know you’re not alone in this #MEMCM journey. Reach out to @RecastSoftware if you’re interested and unsure where to start, and I’ll try to help you connect with your local group.

Microsoft Product Announcements

New Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager co-management licensing

A new license is now available that lets Configuration Manager customers with Software Assurance get Intune co-management for Windows 10 PCs without having to purchase an additional Intune license for co-management. Customers no longer need to assign individual Intune/EMS licenses to their end users for co-managing Windows 10.

• Devices managed by Configuration Manager and enrolled into co-management have almost the same rights as Intune Standalone MDM managed PCs. However, after resetting they can’t be re-provisioned by using Autopilot.
• Windows 10 devices enrolled into Intune by using other means require full Intune licenses.
• Devices on other platforms still require full Intune licenses.

Intune Whats New Landing Page

ConfigMgr Whats New Landing Page

• ConfigMgr 1910 went General Availability (GA), or what they call the Slow Ring on 12/20.

ConfigMgr Tech Preview Landing Page

• TP 1912 released.

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Hardware Vendor Updates

HP

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page]
• HP Client Management Script Library – New Release.  Adds additional functionality around getting supported Windows 10 builds on a particular model, easier to download and extract driver packs, and other new commandlets. – Associated Blog Post
• HP Image Assistant – Latest Release from 2019.11
• HP Manageability Integration Kit – Latest Release from 2019.11
• HP BIOS Configuration Utility (BCU) – Updated Version 4.0.30.1 SP100599 (Not even listed on Website yet) – User Guide (PDF) – Updated to support Sure Admin – BIOS certificates Technology.
• [Blog Post] Leveraging HP CMSL for ConfigMgr CI’s [Gary Blok]

Dell

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page]
• Dell Command Monitor – No Change – Last Update 2019.04
• Dell Command Configure (CCTK) – No Change – Last Update 2019.09
• Dell Command Update – UPDATED – Last Update 2019.11 – Command-line interface support & more in 3.1
• Dell Command PowerShell Provider – No Change -Last Update 2019.04

Lenovo

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page]
• System Update – No Change – Last Update 2019.08
• Thin Installer -No Change – Last Update 2019-04
• Vantage for Enterprise – Not much info available on this, large download with lots of parts… date stamp is 2019.08
• Blog Posts. Lenovo has an official blog with how-to’s. It had two posts at the end of October, which I’d recommend reading if you support Lenovo.
• [Blog Post] 2019.11.26 – System Deployment Boot Mode (SDB) is a new feature added to the Whiskey Lake generation of ThinkPads.  This introduces the ability to programmatically configure key security BIOS settings during your operating system deployments.

Microsoft [Surface]

• Surface Support: Drivers – Constant Updates, you’ll have to do some drill-downs to find if a specific product to see if there are updates
• Surface Tools for IT: – Updated 2019.11.08

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Community Tools Blogs

Check out some of our favorite tools for ConfigMgr, along with several blog posts covering a wide range of areas and ideas to all help with Endpoint Management.  This month was quite busy in the community.

I just wanted to make a special call out to a new website, a portal of collaboration, a way to get plugged in to the Microsoft Endpoint Management community. Systems Management Squad “Our goal is to foster community driven IT knowledge sharing through mentor-supported blogging and public speaking.”

PodCasts / Blog Series / Video Blogs‍

• [Video Blog Series] ConfigMas [2Pint’s Johan & Ami] – a daily post covering all topics ConfigMgr
• [Blog Series] The 12 Tools of ConfigMas [Paul Winstanley]
• [Blog Series] 12 Tips of Christmas [Power on Platforms]
• [Video Tutorial] AdminService in ConfigMgr [Steve Rachui]
• [PodCast] ConfigMgr Community Tools Podcast Party from MMS Jazz [Adaptiva]
• [Blog Series] 7 Days of Task Sequence Tips [Gary Blok @RecastSoftware]
• [Blog Hightlight] Top 10 CM Posts of 2019 [Garth Jones]

Blog Posts‍

  Task Sequence / OSD / IPU

• [Blog Post] Debugging your Task Sequence [Paul Winstanley]
• [Blog Post] Command Line Step, Output to TS Variable [Robert Marshall]
• [Blog Post] Screen Shot in WinPE with PowerShell [Damien Van Robeys]
• [Blog Post] Task Sequence Password Protect: GUI for SCCM and MDT [Damien Van Robaeys]
• [Blog Post] Task Sequence Debugger [Vimal Das]
• [Blog Post] Rename your TS Steps with PowerShell [Jonathan @ DeploymentShare]
• [Blog Post] Network Adapter Teaming in MEMCM (aka ‘ConfigMgr’) OSD [Jeff (Keep Calm and) Carreon]
• [Blog Post] Knowledge gained while decrypting the TSEnvironment [Mattias Cedervall]
• [Blog Post] Integrate DaRT in a ConfigMgr boot image using PowerShell [Nickolaj Andersen]
• [Blog Post] WaaS – Overview of WaaS the Wolverine Way [Mike Marable]

 Cloud Tech

• [Blog Post] Securing Access to ConfigMgr AdminService over CMG [Nathan Ziehnert]
• [Blog Post] Cloud Management Gateway might fail on new Azure Subscriptions [Ronni Pederson]
• [Blog Post] Intune – Deploying the Edge Browser [Paul Winstanley]
• [Blog Post] Intune – Configure OneDrive and KFR [Paul Winstanley]
• [Blog Post] Intune – Manage Intune with MS Graph and PowerShell [Damien Van Robaeys]

 General ConfigMgr

• [Blog Post] A Practical Guide to ConfigMgr Operation [Johan Arwidmark & Jordan Benzing]
• [Blog Post] KQL cheat sheet (Used CMPivot)[Tzvia Gitlin Troyna]
• [Blog Post] Getting Network Efficiency from Data Deduplication and BranchCache [Mike Terrill]
• [Blog Post] MBAM integration in Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager version 1910 [Niall C. Brady]
• [Blog Post] ConfigMgr Housekeeping Scripts [Trevor Jones]
• [Blog Post] Move WSUS database and content (updates) to a different drive or folder [Wolfgang Sommergut]
• [Blog Post] Application Groups in Configuration Manager 1910 [Jörgen Nilsson]
• [Blog Post] Boundary and Boundary Group Import and Export [Jason Sandys]
• [Blog Post] Defending the (SCCM) Castle [Tom Degreef]
• [Blog Post] Reporting – ConfigMgr Make Model Power BI Report [Tim Knapp]
• [Blog Post] Reporting – How to bind SSL Certificate for SSRS 2017 [Ram]

 Other SysAdmin Goodies

• [Blog Post] Use FSLogix Containers for Windows Virtual Desktop profiles [Gerry Hampson]
• [Blog Post] Year in review: Samples, scripts, tools [Michael Niehaus]

 Tools

• [Tool] WIMWitch Update(s): 1.3.0 / 1.3.1 [Donna Ryan]
• [Tool] OSDBuilder Update: 2019.12.10  [David Segura]
• [Tool] OSD (Module of OSDBuilder) Update: 2019.12.06 [David Segura]
• [Tool] Driver Automation Tool Updated to 6.4.1 on 2019.12.05

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Recast Updates

• Right Click Tools 4.0 was released with many new tools and features added in the Enterprise edition. Click here to read more about what’s new, watch an on-demand webinar and download the new version today.
• November Monthly Release Update.. so much goodness, check out the full post.

Thanks for checking out the post, and look forward to more monthly updates of what’s going on.  If you think I missed something, or want any other news added, find me on Twitter: @RecastSoftware