Monitor your Windows 11 Feature Updates with Custom Action Scripts and notifications sent to Microsoft Teams

June 9, 2022February 1, 2022 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

I’m kind of continuing on last weeks topic, where I wrote about leveraging SetupConfig.ini and SetupComplete.cmd to carry out custom tasks during a Windows 11 Feature Update.

Remove built-in Teams app and Chat Icon in Windows 11 during a Feature Update via SetupConfig.ini and SetupComplete.cmd

Today I want to demonstrate, how you can leverage the same custom action scripts, to send notifications to a Microsoft Teams channel upon success or failure, when upgrading to Windows 11 using a Feature Update.

I’m still preparing Windows 11 for broad deployment and I will post my exact process once it’s ready. For now I’m just giving you tiny tidbits along the way. 🙂

Remove built-in Teams app and Chat Icon in Windows 11 during a Feature Update via SetupConfig.ini and SetupComplete.cmd

June 9, 2022January 29, 2022 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

This topic in particular, has been very popular since the release of Windows 11 back in October last year.

At this point, there’s at least a dozen posts out there, on how to remove either the built-in Teams app or the Chat Icon from the task bar on devices running Windows 11 already.

I’m in the middle of preparing Windows 11 for broad deployment myself, and this is how I make sure the built-in Teams app and Chat Icon is removed before the user logs on to Windows 11 for the first time. In this scenario, after completing the Feature Update coming from Windows 10.

Deploy your Always On VPN Profile for Windows 11 using Proactive Remediations in Microsoft Intune

January 26, 2022January 26, 2022 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

Why would you do this, when there’s a built-in option to do so, you may ask?

Well, I needed an alternative, as I kept getting some weird errors when using the built-in configuration profile in Intune. The errors only happens for me on Windows 11, so while I’m investigating these, I wanted to have an alternative in order for us to move on with our Windows 11 process.

EDIT: I was just made aware in the comment section, that there’s a known issue around this. Granted, this post can obviously serve as a workaround (or permanent solution moving forward) 🙂

Also, there’s still no option to lock the VPN strategy to SSTP-only in the native configuration profile in Intune. For that I used to run another weekly PowerShell script, resetting the strategy from IKEv2 to SSTP-only. Using a solution like this, also removes that requirement.

Use custom compliance settings in Microsoft Intune to require Windows Hello enrollment

January 9, 2022January 8, 2022 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

Custom compliance settings in Intune, is a relatively new feature and is still in preview. However, the potential in this feature is enormous, and extends the possibilities for compliance policies almost endlessly.

More on the feature from Microsoft Docs here: Use custom compliance settings in Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Docs

A similar feature released to ConfigMgr 2 years ago, and is something I also blogged about here:

Device Compliance with Configuration Baselines, Configuration Manager version 1910 and Microsoft Intune

To demonstrate how awesome this really is, I will give you something I intend to use in production once the feature goes GA.

The use case here, is to ultimately use this in combination with Conditional Access. We don’t force the Windows Hello for Business enrollment via the built-in and full-screen wizard. We believe that’s too intrusive. Instead we send out Toast Notifications to those users/devices, where WHfB is still not in use.

Manage Windows Defender Firewall settings with Endpoint security: Move from Group Policy to Microsoft Intune

December 24, 2021December 23, 2021 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

More relevant than ever. Denmark is well into their second COVID-lockdown, and working from home and remote is yet again mandatory for many.

Speaking of remote work, moving workloads off of your on-premises Active Directory, and therefore being less dependent on your VPN, should be something to prioritize.

Obviously assuming on-premises AD as well as VPN requirement in this scenario, as this is still the reality for many

Managing your Windows Defender Firewall settings from the cloud is not only convenient, but I’d argue also something that will increase your security posture. I’ll try to elaborate along the lines.

Detect and Remediate Lenovo Vantage vulnerabilities using Proactive Remediations and Microsoft Endpoint Manager

December 18, 2021December 17, 2021 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

Just a quick blog post, on how to detect and remediate the Lenovo Vantage Vulnerabilities disclosed this week.

More information here: Lenovo Vantage Component Vulnerabilities – Lenovo Support CY
And here: Lenovo laptops vulnerable to bug allowing admin privileges (bleepingcomputer.com)

This surely has been an eventful week for most IT professionals, beginning with the #Log4j nightmare, and now ending with some Lenovo Vantage fun. Joking aside, this fix is pretty easy, but making sure and proving the vulnerability has been mitigated throughout your environment, might be something else. This post explains how I did.

New Security Baseline version November 2021 for Windows 10/11 in Microsoft Endpoint Manager

December 10, 2021December 9, 2021 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

Super quick blog post, covering the new version of Security Baselines for Windows 10 and 11 in Intune, which was delivered to us with the 2111 service release.

Not much has changed. In fact, if coming from the previous baseline version (December 2020), only one setting has been added: Scan scripts that are used in Microsoft browsers.

So lets take a quick peek at the process I went through, in order to update my Security Baseline.

Windows 10 Toast Notification Script Update: Custom notification app and more built-in prevention from disabling toast notifications

December 8, 2021December 8, 2021 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

It’s been a while since the last update on this script. I admit that. Better late than never, I guess.

This update brings a slight improvement to the looks of the toast notifications, and (almost) definitely removes the option for the end-user to disable the notifications as well.

Also, I was wondering about naming the script differently. The script surely works with Windows 11 too, but seeing the entire toast framework was introduced with Windows 10, and Windows 11 behind the scenes is still appearing as version 10.0, I will stick with the current name.

Getting started with Remote help with Intune and Microsoft Endpoint Manager

December 7, 2021December 6, 2021 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

Remote help is the brand new and sought-after feature, which provides classic remote assistance capabilities (almost) natively to Windows. Remote help was announced during this years Microsoft Ignite, and started its public preview rollout last week.

Remote help is integrated with Microsoft Endpoint Manager, and this blog post serves as my first look into getting started and using this delicious new feature.

TL:DR: Find a short video recording of the Remote help workflow down in the post. 🙂

Back to basics: Modifying registry for the CURRENT user coming from SYSTEM context

December 1, 2021 by Martin Bengtsson

Introduction

Back in the days, when I started out being a newbie in the software deployment world, I had no real grasp about the different contexts (USER vs. SYSTEM), and I found it to be a trivial task to combine the two.

Today I find it an obvious approach, and in this post, I will give a quick example of how to modify registry for the CURRENTLY logged on user, while delivering an installation in SYSTEM context.

Oftentimes the scenario is, that you need to deploy software which requires local SYSTEM permissions, and while doing so, you’d like to modify the registry for the CURRENTLY logged on user.