Recast’s Endpoint Management Recap – July 2020

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‍Welcome to the  Recast Endpoint Management Recap, July 2020 by Gary Blok

Thanks for checking out the July edition of our recap. As always, the layout to the post:

• 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. If you’re new to this monthly post, you’ll want to look back at previous months, so much great content.

Events & Conferences

Upcoming Events:

• [Event (Paid)] MMS MOA – mms moa is cancelled, but still planning for MMS Midway
• [Training (Paid)] Mastering Configuration Manager with Johan Arwidmark and Kent Agerlund (Options: Jun 15, Aug 31, Nov 2)
• [Training (Paid)] Workplace Ninja Virtual Edition 2020 (2020.08.25)
• [Event (Free)] Work from Anywhere (2020.07.29)
• [Event (Free)] PowerShell Conference (2020.07.29)
• [Event (Free)] Summer Edition Evening MC2MC (2020.08.27)
• [Event (Free)] Adapting the Modern Workplace (2020.08.07)
• [Previous Event: Recordings] Microsoft Inspire.
•   I would recommend watching this: Microsoft Endpoint Manager: Productivity from any device, anywhere.

Training Resources:

• [Free] CS50: Introduction to Computer Science (Self-Paced @Harvard)
• [Free] Windows 10 Deployment Guide & Newsletter (deploymentresearch.com)
• If anyone has anything else you think would be of value to the community, let me know on twitter and I’ll add it here.

User Groups:

This is a repeat of last month, I’ll leave them up for this month to help you make sure you’ve followed these groups. This month I had the opportunity to join an event hosted by Greg Ramsey of the NWSCUG group, in collaboration with AZSMUG and TCSMUG. As we continue to social distance and avoid large gatherings, it only makes sense to pool these events to provide a wide variety of topics,

• TCSMUG – Twin Cities Systems Management User Group. [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• HASMUG – Houston Area [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• AZSMUG – Arizona Systems Management User Group [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• NWSCUG – Northwest System Center User Group [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• FMSCUG – Fargo-Moorhead System Center User Group [Twitter]
• MEMUG – Microsoft Enterprise Management Usergroup – Denver [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• CSMUG – Chicago Systems Management User Group [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• CKYMUG – Central Kentucky Microsoft User Group [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• LouMUG – Louisville area Microsoft User Group [Twitter]
• DFWSMUG – Dallas Fort Worth [Twitter]
• CTSMUG – Central Texas Systems Management User Group – Austin, TX [Twitter] [EventBrite]
• SASMUG – San Antonio Systems Management User Group [Twitter]
• CLESCUG – Cleveland System Center User Group [Twitter]
• V_SMUG – Virtual System Management User Group [Twitter] [ Last Meeting Notes & Video]

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Microsoft Products & Announcements

Microsoft has posted a page with a lot of great resources during this time, to help IT professionals, Educators, Families, and Remote Business, along with how Microsoft is helping in the battle on Covid-19 on their Responding to COVID-19 together page.

‍Products:

Microsoft Edge Browser (Based on Chromium Engine): [Landing Page]

• Security baseline for Microsoft Edge v84

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection – [Landing Page] [Resource Hub]

Microsoft 365 [Landing Page] [Roadmap] [Tech Community]

• Universal Printing goes Public Preview
• The Future Vision of Microsoft 365 (Jon Friedman: Head of Microsoft Office design)
• TLS 1.0 and 1.1 deprecation for Office 365 – Starting Oct 15 2020
• Managing your availability in Microsoft Teams
• Teams Together Mode
• Announcing public preview of Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention

‍ConfigMgr [What’s New Page] [Tech Community]

• 2020.07.15 –ConfigMgr 2002, Update Rollup for Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager version 2002
• [MDT] Windows 10 deployments fail with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit on computers with BIOS type firmware
• 2006 is just around the corner. TAP is happening now, and by the time you read this, it might already be out.

ConfigMgr Tech Preview [What’s New Page]

• TP 2007 (2020.07.14)
•  Improvements to client data sources dashboard
•   Fixed-width font now used in some console areas (THIS IS HUGE FOR THOSE WHO LEVERAGE POWERSHELL A LOT)
•   Manage task sequence policy size
• TP 2006 (2020.06.29)
•   So much CMG stuff
•   Improvements to managing device restarts – So this actually caused a bit of commotion on Twitter, both sides fighting adamantly for or against this feature.  I’m in the camp that this feature was a bad idea. For those interested, here is the tweet, there are several comments and forks to the thread.  Happy reading.

Intune [What’s New Page] [Tech Community]

• Manage endpoint security in Microsoft Intune [New MS Doc]
• Known Issue – Windows Updates occasionally incorrectly show as not succeeded in Intune

Windows 10 [Landing Page] [Tech Community]

• Resolved: Known Issue with BitLocker Key rotation for Windows 10 1909 devices in Intune
• Whats New in 2004 for ITPros Updated

Security Alerts

• CVE-2020-1350 Vulnerability in Windows Domain Name System (DNS) Server
•   CM Baseline to Remediate (Ioan Popovici @IoanPopovici)

GitHub

• GitHub enabled Profile ReadMe, check out more info

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Hardware Vendor Updates

I’m only listing changes. If you want a more complete list of their tools, check out previous month’s posts.

HP

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page] [Community / Blog Site]
• [White Paper] HP Enterprise Models BIOS released via Windows Update
• HP Client Management Script Library 1.5 released – two modules and a number of feature enhancements.
• TIP: HP’s closeout, overstock and refurbished business products

Dell

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page]
• The BIOS team just published a whitepaper on Direct WMI management with Dell devices.  [PDF]
• TIP: Dell Refurbished Site
• TIP: Dell Outlet

Lenovo

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page][Blog Site]

Microsoft [Surface]

• Battery protection feature: Caring for your Surface battery
• Dock 2 – New to the Surface line, gotta say, really wish I had one.
• Dock 2 overview‍
•  SEMM for Dock 2
• Dock 2 WMI provider:

• MS Mechanics videos
•   Book 3
•   Go 2
•  Dock 2
•   Book 3 teardown video This is worth a watch if you’re into hardware, what they pack into the Surface Book is amazing.

Community Tools \ Blogs

One more note, I do my best to provide Twitter accounts with the blog posts, both to provide credit where credit is due, and so you can then follow them yourselves to stay in the loop as things are coming out and ideas are being discussed on twitter.

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Podcasts / Blog Series / Video Blogs‍

• [Youtube Channel] Season 2, Episode 1  Easily Create Power BI Reports with the Intune Data Warehouse – (I.T) [@OnPremCloudGuy & @AdamGrossTX]
• PSConfEU (@PSConfEU) All of the videos for #PSCOnfEU 2020 are available
• [Blog Series] Applocker Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) (Sami Laiho @samilaiho)
• [PodCast] Latest Episode  (Couple of Jerks @JustJerksPod) – Just a Couple of Jerks takes us into the IT community to meet the individuals out there who are helping others and sharing their solutions and ideas.
• [Video Series] Video Tutorial: Introduction – Applications in MEMCM (Steve Rachui @steverac)
• [Blog Series] Cloud OS Deployment (Johan Arwidmark @jarwidmark)
• [Blog Series] Tenant Attach (Paul Winstanley [MVP] @SCCMentor)
• [Blog Series] Intune Troubleshooting (Damien Van Robaeys @syst_and_deploy)
•   [Post 1] Remotely collect logs from your devices and upload them on Azure file
•  [Post 2] Remotely collect logs from devices and upload them on GitHub
•  [Post 3] Collect remotely whatever you want (files, event logs) on devices
• [NEW VLOG Youtube] “Leon’s IT Vlog” which is going to be a series of short videos with the aim of keeping you up to date with the latest in MS Intune (Leon Ashton-Leatherland @LeonAshtonL1983)

Blog Posts

 Cloud Tech

• [Blog Post – Co-Management] Using MEMCM to fix legacy GPO settings that prevent co-managed clients getting updates from Intune (Ben Whitmore @byteben)
• [Blog Post – Azure] How to set up Disaster Recovery for Azure IaaS VMs (Thomas Maurer @ThomasMaurer)
• [Blog Post – Intune] Display simple toast notification for user in System context with Intune (Damien Van Robaeys @syst_and_deploy)
• [Blog Post – Intune] Windows 10 Toast Notification Script Update: Support for use with Endpoint Analytics Proactive Remediations (Martin Bengtsson @mwbengtsson)
• [Blog Post – Endpoint Analytics] Improve your endpoint user experience with ‘Insight driven IT’ Endpoint Analytics: A first impression! (Ronny de Jong @ronnydejong)
• [Blog Post – Endpoint Analytics] Improve endpoint user experience with Microsoft Endpoint Analytics: Startup Performance (Ronny de Jong @ronnydejong)
• [Blog Post – Intune] Automatically configure Outlook contact sync to the native contacts app with Microsoft Intune (Peter Klapwijk @inthecloud_247)

General ConfigMgr

• [Blog Post WIM] How to Capture Microsoft Office Data WIM File and Install the Package from within the OSD Task Sequence (Mohammed Feroze Khan @ferozekhan267oa)
• [Blog Post WIM] Use a WIM to Deploy Large Apps via ConfigMgr App Model (Justin Holloman @admin_sccm)
• [Blog Post] Collection based on success of Software Update Deployment (Paul Winstanley [MVP] @SCCMentor)
• [Blog Post] How to Deploy Fonts with MEMCM  (Ben Whitmore @byteben)
• [Blog Post] Triggering Evaluation of SMS_DesiredConfiguration Instances on a Client Using Powershell (Niall C. Brady @ncbrady)
• [Blog Post] SCCM CMPivot Query Examples (@benoitlecours)]
• [Blog Post] Deploy Service Announcement Toast Notifications in Windows 10 with MEMCM (Ben Whitmore @byteben)
• [Blog Post] Demystifying Windows 10 Feature Update Blocks (Adam Gross @AdamGrossTX)

 Other SysAdmin Goodies

• [Blog Post] Working with Attack Surface Reduction rules to reduce the attack surface of applications (Peter van der Woude @pvanderwou(Martin Bengtsson [MVP] (@mwbengtsson)de)
• [Blog Post] Installing a font with MSIX so that other apps on your system can see it (Pascal Berger @bergerspascal)
• [Blog Post] How the OBS Project changed video forever with lead Hugh Bailey (Scott Hanselman @shanselman) – I added this because I use OBS for all my video recording and live streaming. It’s open source, and feature rich.
• [Blog Post] GetBIOS module new version – List BIOS Settings from local or remote computer (Damien Van Robaeys @syst_and_deploy)
• [Blog Post] 10 suggestions to improve your next PowerShell script (Nicola Suter @nicolonsky)
• [Blog Post] Legacy Auth and the risk (Nick @NickC_MSFT)
• [Blog Post] Quick Assist / Teams Remote Support (Oliver Kieselbach @okieselb)
• [Blog Post] Always On VPN – Troubleshooting (Jon Anderson @ConfigJon)

Tool Updates

• OSD Builder Updated! Support Windows 10 version 2004 & a couple bug fixes
• CM Health Check – PowerShell Gallery (David Stein @skatterbrainzz)
• The Modern Workplace Concierge is a helper tool to simplify your daily work with Microsoft 365 services. [GitHub] (Nicola Suter @nicolonsky)
• The (G)UI++ Alpha is here! [GitHub] (Nathan Ziehnert @theznerd)
• CM-SRS-Dashboards Updated! [GitHub] (Ioan Popovici @IoanPopovici)
• Don’t let your NIC go to Sleep. Thanks to @guyrleech we now have a Function you can steal. [GitHub]
• New version of the PowerShell Extension Kit for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit has been released version 0.2.0.1 [GitHub]
• The ConfigMgr Hydration Kit, an automated labsetup, updated for ConfigMgr 2002, and Windows ADK 10 2004

Recast Software Updates‍

• New Version of Right Click Tools has been released: Version 4.3 [Recast]
• [Blog Post] Community Influencer Highlights – Donna Ryan
• [Event (free)] We are happy to sponsor Workplace Ninja’s Virtual Edition 2020 event from August 25-27, 2020, we hope you can join us

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