Recast’s Endpoint Management Recap – May 2020

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

Thanks for joining me once again for the Recap, this month was busy with several cool announcements from Microsoft and some other announcements that just created busy work. Moving from Office 365 to Microsoft 365 and the update channel names which take effect in the next couple weeks (more about that later), to a new packaging tool winget. Microsoft is keeping busy while we’re stuck at home.

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 and User Group info:

• Microsoft Events for 2020 are all virtual. [zdnet.com]
• GeekWeek – Truesec – March 23-27, 2020, Chicago – Date Change: Dec 6-11‍
• MMS MOA – Postponed to July 26th-30th
• Microsoft Build – The event is now over , but the sessions are available for playback.
• HPE Discover – Virtual Experience – June 23, Live and On-Demand
• Cisco Live -June 2-3
• Aruba ATM Digital – June 9
• Apple’s WWDC – June 22
• [User Group] TCSMUG – June 16
• [User Group] MN 365 – Virtual – June 6
• [Training (Paid)] Mastering Configuration Manager with Johan Arwidmark and Kent Agerlund (Options: Jun 15, Aug 31, Nov 2)

I’d like to make a plug for the Microsoft Tech Communities. They often have AMAs or “Office Hours” which you can post your questions and Microsoft Staff are monitoring to reply to your posts. This is a great way to get familiar with the Tech Community Boards, start posting your questions and answering others. I’ve added links to the Tech Communities below next to their corresponding products.

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]

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection – [Resource Hub]

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

• Channel Changes – Added Monthly Enterprise and renamed the rest.
• Name Changes – Office 365 ProPlus is being renamed to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise

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

• 2020.05.06 –ConfigMgr 2002, Update Rollup KB4553501
• Piles of Bug Fixes
• [Experience GitHub] Microsoft Endpoint Management Experience (MEMEX) team GitHub Repo

ConfigMgr Tech Preview [What’s New Page]

• TP 2004
• Copy discovery data from the console
• Improvements to CMPivot
• Improvement to Format and Partition Disk task sequence step
• Management insight rules for OS deployment

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

• Manage endpoint security in Microsoft Intune [New MS Doc]

Windows 10 [Landing Page] [Tech Community]

• Windows 10 – 2004 – What’s new for IT Pros (if you are responsible for deploying win10, you’ll want to read this, some great new features around upgrades)
• Windows 10 – no more 32bit
• Windows 10 – ADK 2004

‍Announcements:

• WinGet – Use the winget tool to install and manage applications
• Visual Studio Code – Chat / Video Feature

Hardware Vendor Updates

This month I’m trying something different, 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]
• MIK 3.2 with OS deployment enhancements
•  Driver packages as legacy software packages  
•  Add to task sequences with WMI for the platforms from the driver pack
•   Software install package auto creation (hotkeys, etc) also supported for adding to a task sequence     with the WMI for the platform

• HPIA 4.5.8 is out with some fixes related to installing softpaqs. Should be significantly more robust to handle softpaqs that have scripts inside of them that could be impacted by whitespace issues
• A couple of new blog posts on the manageability blog since last month https://developers.hp.com/community/blog/hp-client-management
•   [Blog] Installing UWP drivers
•   [Blog] Use HPIA for driver updates
•   [Blog] Use HPIA for driver injection
•  [Blog] Scripted/Download of driver packs

Dell

They had a big month last month so it makes sense didn’t see many new releases this month.

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page]
• WinPE Windows 10 Driver Pack Updated
•   Updated NIC Drivers & Added Intel RST

Lenovo

• [Enterprise Tools Landing Page][Blog Site]
• New article on the blog focused on helping customers who want to move patching to the cloud to support more “working from home” devices on the internet. 

Microsoft [Surface]

• No new tools or updates at the moment, but I’ve heard they are busy working on updating tools for Book3 & Go2.

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.  

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.

Podcasts / Blog Series / Video Blogs‍

• [Youtube Channel] Episode 39: Building USB Provisioning Media for Quick OS Rebuilds for Intune Environments [@OnPremCloudGuy & @AdamGrossTX]
• [Teams Meeting – Training] Free Intune Training from How to Manage Devices Community via HTMD Teams Channel (Anoop C Nair @anoopmannur)
• [Blog Series] Microsoft 365 Enterprise Deployment – Lessons Learned (Gary Blok @RecastSoftware)
• [Blog Series] Office 365 Deployment Series with MEMCM (Gary Blok @RecastSoftware)
• [PodCast] Latest Episode  (Couple of Jerks @JustJerksPod)
• [Recorded Webinar] COVID-19 – The Headaches it Creates for Enterprise Client Management (CTGlobal @TeamCTGlobal)

Blog Posts‍

 Cloud Tech

• [Blog Post – MEM Intune] Using Intune to remotely install Powershell modules on enrolled devices (Dean Lawrence @TypicalLawrence)
• [Blog Post – MEM Intune] Automated 3rdParty patch remediation in Intune with Azure Automation (Jan Ketil Skanke @JankeSkanke)
• [Blog Post – MEM Intune] Intune Troubleshooting Part 1 – Remotely collect logs from your devices and upload them on Azure file (Damien Van Robaeys @syst_and_deploy)
• [Blog Post – MEM Intune] Use Intune and PowerShell to deploy application in Windows Sandbox on devices (Damien Van Robaeys @syst_and_deploy)
• [Blog Post – MEM Intune] Deploy custom Microsoft Teams backgrounds, easily, with PowerShell and Intune (Ben Whitmore @byteben)
• [Blog Post – MEM Intune] Easiest way Remove Built-in Apps from Windows 10 Using Intune without PowerShell (Anoop C Nair @anoopmannur)
• [Blog Post – Admin Center] Using device sync and device actions in Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center (Niall C. Brady @ncbrady)
• [Blog Post – Azure] How to Reset RDP and Admin Password of an AzureVM (Thomas Maurer @ThomasMaurer)
• [Blog Post – CMG] Cloud management gateway: addressing common challenges

ConfigMgr Task Sequence / OSD / WaaS

• [Blog Post] Who Deleted my Task Sequence (Anoop C Nair @anoopmannur)
• [Blog Post] LockDown Diary – How I used DJOIN to Build TestMachines over VPN (Adam Gross @AdamGrossTX)

General ConfigMgr

• [Blog Post] Windows 10 Multilanguage Deployment with MEMCM
• [Blog Post] ConfigMgr Reporting Error – UserTokenSIDs LDAP Server Unavailable (Harjit Dhaliwal [MVP] @Hoorge)
• [Blog Post] How to prepare SCCM CMG Client installation switches for internet based client (Eswar)
• [Blog Post] All My Devices Left Me. I’m Scared. What Do I Do Now? (Bryan Dam @bdam555)
• [Blog Post] Extracting Device Names from Bad MIFs in ConfigMgr (Adam Gross @AdamGrossTX)
• [Blog Post] Configure Microsoft Teams application settings using Configuration Manager and PowerShell (Martin Bengtsson @mwbengtsson)
• ‍

 Other SysAdmin Goodies

• [Blog Post] PowerShell & WPF: Display alert bar in your application (Damien Van Robaeys @syst_and_deploy)
• [Blog Post] Remote work: RDS vs. VDI vs. VPN (Brandon Lee @vspinmaster)
• [PowerShell Tip] The most useful PowerShell cmdlet I didn’t know existed (Michael Niehaus @mniehaus)
• [Blog Post] Deploying Edge without a desktop shortcut, the easiest way (Michael Niehaus @mniehaus)
• [Tool – Dashboard] SCCM/MEMCM PowerBi Client Data Source Dashboard (Adam Gross @AdamGrossTX)
• [Teams] Engage with Kahoot! directly in Microsoft Teams: remote work just got better!
• [Tool – Utilities] MS PowerToys – Windows system utilities to maximize productivity (Github)
• [Blog Post] Troubleshooting BranchCache For ConfigMgr Environments (Johan Arwidmark @jarwidmark)
• [Blog Post] Reach for the Sky! A Toy Story Restart Notification (Trevor Jones @SMSagentTrevor)
• [Blog Post] Progressive Automation Part II – PowerShell GUIs (Stephen Owen Deploy@FoxDeploy)
• [Tool – CM Packager] – PowerShell Script that can be used to create applications in SCCM [GitHub] (Andrew Jimenez @AndrewJimenez_)

Recast Software Updates‍

• New feature alert! You can now use Right Click Tools on the ConfigMgr Fast Channel, learn more about the new feature here and how to install it silently here.
• The recordings of our 5-part webinar series covering the security and compliance dashboards within Right Click Tools are now available. Presented by the developers of Right Click Tools, our dashboards surface data on compliance levels including common security features, BitLocker, software updates, LAPS and more, paired with actions to quickly address problems that are discovered.

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