After Ignite where Co-Management was announced, where we can manage a Windows 10 client both using SCCM on premise and using Intune and AzureAD, we can now test out this feature in Configuration Manager 1709 Technical Preview! While Co-Management is the biggest new feature in 1709TP, the VPN Profile creation wizard has gotten a whole new look to it as well.
Co-Management of a Windows 10 device with AD/Configuration Manager and AzureAD/Intune is a huge step towards the transition to Modern Management. With the modern threats and fast moving changes as Office 365, Windows 10, Onedrive for Business and all the As-A-Service solutions, managing these solutions the traditional way can for many organizations be really tough. Modern management could be an answer to at least some organizations and for the rest that has some really heavy legacy of applications, at least some users/devices can managed the modern way. And with Co-Management we can take the best of both worlds and use them as we transition to modern management.
Enabling Co-Management
To enable Co-Management we need the following pre-reqs inplace:
- Technical Preview for Configuration Manager version 1709
- Azure AD
- EMS or Intune license for all users
- Intune Subscription setup as standalone (Intune is the MDM authority)
- Windows 10, version 1709 (Fall Creators Update) and later
- Hybrid Azure AD joined (joined to AD and Azure AD
For more information check out the documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/get-started/capabilities-in-technical-preview-1709#co-management-for-windows-10-devices
To enable Co-Management we go to the Administration tab in the console, select Cloud Services and there it is the new Co-Management tab.
From there we can select Configure Co-management and signing in to the Intune Subscription that should be used.
We select Pilot as we want to test it out, before we move all our clients.
My next test will be to move my newly installed Windows 10 Insider preview machines to the Pilot collection and test it out. This is going to be extremely useful to transition to modern management.
Updated VPN profile wizard
The updated VPN profile wizard now adopts the rest of the wizard after the platform you choose. For example if I choose Windows 10, only the options applicable for Windows 10 VPN profiles are presented to me.
If I choose Android, only the options applicable for Android is displayed
If we compare that to how the wizard looks like in Configuration Manager 1703 it is much easier to use in the new version.
Management Insight is also listed in the scenarios for new features, probably because it had some challenges in the previous Technical Preview.
Management Insight gives you suggestions on unused things in Configuration Manager, like Empty Collections and Applications without deployments. In larger environments with a great number of Applications and Collections it can be hard to find those unused things that are still in the console.
