If you come from Configuration Manager, it’s natural to expect control. You decide when something happens, you schedule it, you can often predict the outcome, and if something breaks, you usually assume it’s your environment.
Intune works differently. It’s closer to “define desired state and let devices converge.” For many teams, the first months with Intune feel risky because they try to recreate the same level of timing and certainty they had in ConfigMgr by using more profiles, more targeting, and more exceptions. That tends to produce a tenant that is hard to understand and even harder to change safely.
There’s another operational shift: Intune is a SaaS service, which means you don’t control the underlying infrastructure. Most of the time, you don’t need to, but it changes incident thinking. When Intune has issues, it’s not just your organization that’s affected. It can be everyone. I’ve seen this cause real disruption for customers, not because their configuration was wrong, but because their operating model assumed the platform would behave like an on-premises system.
This post covers practical operational patterns that reduce that risk—not perfect control, but predictable change, clear scope, and fast recovery.
1. Translate ConfigMgr Requirements into Intune Intent
A useful way to make the shift is to translate requirements into intent. When someone says, “We need the same requirements as before,” ask what that requirement is protecting:
- Predictable user impact
- Limited blast radius
- Approval gates
- The ability to pause or roll back quickly
- Clear accountability
Those goals still matter, but the method changes.
Here are translations that often help teams avoid “ConfigMgr in the cloud” design:
- “We need maintenance windows” becomes “We need a predictable user experience and controlled disruption.”
- “We need exact timing” becomes “We need staged rollout and the ability to pause.”
- “We need strict targeting” becomes “We need clear scope and easy troubleshooting.”
- “We need approvals” becomes “We need a release process and a rollback plan.”
Use the Migration as a Cleanup Opportunity
Moving from ConfigMgr and Active Directory is also the best chance you’ll get to clean up. If you migrate everything “as is,” you usually bring over years of exceptions, duplicated settings, and policies that nobody can explain.
This is where you decide what is still a real business requirement and what is just historical baggage. The goal should not be to move everything; the goal should be to move what you actually want to operate for the next few years.
The same mindset shift shows up with drivers and BIOS. The problem is rarely that new versions cause issues. More often, the risk is that you stay on old versions for too long, and then security fixes, reliability improvements, and large version jumps become painful. Staying reasonably current, with rings and a rollback plan, is usually safer than freezing.
2. Treat Policy Changes as High-Impact Releases
Policies can feel “dangerous” in Intune because it’s easy to assign something broadly and see impact quickly. That’s great when you’re right, and painful when you’re wrong.
To reduce risk, treat policy changes like production releases:
- Define the goal and expected impact
- Deploy through rings, not straight to everyone
- Validate a small set of success signals
- Have a rollback plan before broad rollout
Many tenants drift into a mode where profiles get created to solve problems quickly, then never get cleaned up. Over time, overlap increases, exceptions grow, and the tenant becomes less predictable.
Intune Policies Are Not GPOs—Avoid Designing for Precedence
It’s easy to assume Intune policies behave like Group Policy because the outcome looks similar as settings get applied to devices. But the processing model is different.
In Active Directory, GPOs have a well-known precedence order. If multiple GPOs configure the same setting, precedence determines which value wins, even if the design is messy.
In Intune, you don’t get that same safety net. If two policies configure the same setting differently, you can end up with conflicts. In practice, you usually have to resolve this by design, not by relying on order.
The implication is simple: Do not build an Intune tenant that relies on overlaps. Consolidate where it makes sense, keep a clear source of truth per setting area, and treat conflicts as a design bug, not a normal state.
3. Use Rings Every Time, and Make Them Fit Your Organization
Pilot rings are the simplest guardrail you can add to an Intune tenant. The structure can be lightweight or formal, but it needs to exist.
A model that works well in practice is four rings:
- Technical pilot: A small group of users with higher endpoint knowledge who know they are part of the pilot and are willing to report issues. This often includes IT, service desk, engineers, and power users. The benefit is faster feedback and better bug reports.
- Business pilot: A representative subset of the business. Spread it across geographic regions, departments, and device types so you catch real-world variation early.
- Broad: A controlled percentage increase where you watch for scale effects and edge cases.
- Default: Everyone else
Technical pilots are for speed. Business pilots are for reality.
How big should these rings be? It depends on the size of the organization.
- In smaller organizations where the same people run everything, rings can be small and fast, but still real. Pilot might be 5 to 20 devices; broad might be 20 to 40 percent.
- In larger enterprises with multiple teams and many device variants, rings often need to be percentage based and more structured.
The most important rule is consistency. Every meaningful change goes through rings, even the “small” ones.
4. Keep Scope Simple. Having Fewer Assignments Means Fewer Surprises.
Most Intune firefighting comes from overlapping assignments and exception sprawl.
A stable tenant typically has:
- A small number of groups based on device “shapes,” not org charts
- Minimal overlap between assignments
- Naming that reflects intent, not just workload names
- Exceptions that are explicit, owned, and time-boxed
A practical standard is this: You should be able to explain in one minute why a device is targeted and what it should receive. If you can’t, you’re building a troubleshooting problem.
This is also where the GPO comparison matters. In Intune, overlapping settings can become conflicts, so scope of discipline is not just “nice to have,” it’s a stability requirement.
5. Document Ownership, Even if It’s the Same People
In bigger enterprises, Intune work is often split across endpoint engineering, security, identity, and support. In smaller organizations, it might be the same people doing everything.
Either way, document ownership. It prevents confusion during incidents and reduces “everyone changes everything.”
A simple model that scales:
- Security owns security baselines and compliance requirements.
- The endpoint team owns configuration design, rollout patterns, and app delivery mechanics.
- The service desk owns triage playbooks and escalation triggers.
Even if the names overlap, the responsibilities should not.
6. Make Rollback a Requirement, Not a Rescue Plan
Rollback is what turns change from risk into routine.
Before you move beyond pilot, know:
- How to stop further impact quickly, usually by removing an assignment from the ring
- What “undo” means for that specific area
- What you will check to confirm the rollback worked
A habit that works well is to include a short rollback plan in every change description. If rollback is hard to explain, the change is not ready for broad rollout.
This matters most for high-impact areas like security baselines, update strategy, networking, and anything that affects sign-in.
7. Plan for SaaS Incidents, Not Just Misconfiguration
With on-premises tooling, most incidents are local. With SaaS, sometimes the platform is the incident.
When the service has issues, teams can waste hours of troubleshooting their own tenant, making changes that add noise and risk. These operational decisions reduce that:
- Decide how you confirm “service issue vs. tenant issue” quickly, and who makes that call.
- Define what you communicate internally when it’s likely service-side.
- Define what you pause during an incident, e.g., broad rollouts and baseline changes.
- Keep break-glass access and escalation paths clear.
The goal is not to eliminate SaaS incidents—you can’t. The goal is to respond predictably and avoid making things worse.
8. Decide How You Back up and Version Your Intune Configuration
Backup in Intune does not work the same way as in ConfigMgr.
With ConfigMgr, many teams are used to having a clearer story for backup and restore, and a stronger sense of controlling the management platform. In Intune, there isn’t one obvious, built-in “back up everything and restore it” button that covers all settings and objects the way people expect. That’s why you see a mix of approaches, community tooling, scripts, and vendor-supported products, depending on maturity and risk tolerance.
The important point is not which tool you choose, it’s that you choose an approach deliberately. For operational stability, you want at least three outcomes:
- Change tracking: You can tell what changed, when, and why.
- Versioning: You can compare “before and after” for a policy set.
- Recovery: You have a practical way to recreate or revert critical configuration if something goes wrong.
In practice, many organizations end up treating key Intune configuration like code: Export what matters, store it in source control, and make changes through a controlled process. Even if you never automate full deployment, having a reliable record of configuration versions makes troubleshooting and rollback much easier.
A Minimum Operating Rhythm That Keeps Intune Boring
You don’t need heavy governance. You need consistency.
Here’s a lightweight cadence that works:
- Weekly 30-minute review: what moved rings, what is planned next, what is blocked
- Emergency changes are rare and reviewed afterward, briefly and without blame
- A short list of signals checked weekly—for example, top app install success, top compliance failure reasons, and recent policy changes
This creates learning loops. Without them, every incident feels new.
Quick Checklist
- Requirements are written as intent, not “ConfigMgr behavior.”
- Migration is used as a cleanup opportunity. Junk is not moved forward.
- Policy changes are treated as high-impact releases.
- Overlapping settings are avoided. Conflicts are treated as a design bug.
- Every meaningful change goes through the same stages: technical pilot, business pilot, broad, default.
- Pilot users are representative across regions, departments, and device types.
- Assignments are limited. Overlap is intentional and documented.
- Exceptions have an owner, a reason, and an expiration.
- Ownership and escalation paths are documented.
- Every change has a rollback plan.
- You have a plan for service-side incidents and how you communicate them.
- You have a defined approach for backup, versioning, and recovery of key configuration.
Conclusion
Intune can absolutely be stable, but it rewards discipline. The biggest shift for ConfigMgr teams is accepting that you don’t operate it by controlling every detail. You operate it by controlling risk.
Translate requirements into intent, take the chance to clean up during migration, deploy through rings, keep scope simple, define ownership, and build rollback muscle memory. Add a deliberate approach to versioning and recovery, and Intune stops being a fire drill and becomes a service you can run.
Recast: The Intune Companion
Microsoft offers powerful tools for IT admins through the Intune Suite, and Recast is the ideal companion to help organizations maximize those capabilities. Recast builds on what Microsoft provides by delivering additional options for enhanced security and advanced device and application management.
There are scenarios where IT teams need expanded functionality, such as managing custom applications, handling third-party app patching on servers, or applying highly specific update requirements. Recast complements Intune by handling these specialized tasks, working alongside the Microsoft ecosystem to streamline operations.
We’re excited about where Microsoft is headed and how Intune continues to empower IT admins. Recast is proud to stand alongside Intune as a companion solution, helping teams do even more with the tools they already rely on.
If you don’t already have our free Right Click Tools for Intune, you can download them here.
