Configmgr 1612 Technical Preview main new features

Configuration Manager 1612 Technical Preview was released a couple of days ago and I have been playing around with it all the time I could spare since! Many new features that makes us long for 1701TP already now to see how the new features have improved.

I cannot help seeing a picture before me where David James are Santa Claus and the rest of fhe ConfigMgr team are his helpers :-), the work and innovation put in Configuration Manager the last year is truly amazing! Fantaststic Work!

I have played around with a couple of the new features so I will cover them here, for a complete list of new features check out the documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/get-started/capabilities-in-technical-preview-1612

Task Sequence Retry option:

We have a new retry option when a Task Sequence fails because there is not content availble or a deployment could not be found for the computer in WinPE. A great addition, there are more steps that could benefit of a “retry” option but I am sure that will come.

It looks like this when content is missing on the DP, we now have a “Previous” button in the dialog, so we can retry the previous step.

Checking for running applications when an application is about to install.

This is a very big deal as well, we can now add .exe files that shouldn’t be running when our application is trying to install. We add the .exe files in a new tab for the deployment type.

I tested with an available deployment to a user and then this dialog is shown. A friendly name would be a great addition so the user knows what to close, a retry option like in the TS would also be good.

Android for Work

Android for work is in the console but not yet operational. Also high on our list to Santa.

Data Warehouse

We got a new Site System role “Data Warehouse service Point” which is just that, a DatawareHouse. It makes it possible to copy data to another SQL database for long term storage. This is great as we can replace all the custom solutions out there today. I love the

We can then choose which custom tables to include/exclude in out Data Warehouse and when to synchronize data.

There are a couple of builtin reports as well that uses the Data Warehouse as datasource. The one I am sure I will use the most is the “Endpoint Protection and Software Update Compliance report” great stuff no more custom solutions to solve that for customers.

OData endpoint data access

We have a new option under Site Properties to enable REST endpoint for quering Configuration Manager data from the tool of our choosing, PowerBI or Excel for instance.

Express files support for Windows 10 (RS2 or update to RS1 in early 2017 required)

We can now enable support for Express updates both on our Software Update Point and in the client settings as well to allow the client to use the Express files. This feature requires either Windows 10 RS2 or an update coming to Windows 10 1607 in early 2017 to work. Express updates are a big deal, because they bring down the amount of data that the clients will download when applying Windows 10 Cumulative Updates.

Enhancement for online-licensed apps from the Windows Store for Business (RS2 required)

This feature will make it possible to deploy Online licensed apps using Configuration Manager, the next step towards the future of application management.

Azure AD onboarding

We can now add our Azure AD to Configuration Manager which can in turn be used by the Cloud Management Gateway to provide user policies to our clients when they use the Cloud Management Gateway.

In-console improvements

Ther are som console improvements, where my favorite is that it actually remembers if you selected to search sub-nodes.

So many new features to try out! There are more, like the command line tool to cleanup content in the content library and I am sure much more as well. I will play around with it some more and see what I can find.