InTune and management of different phones

Hey there all,

So the past wee while has seen me tooling around with some cool things. I have been exploring my musings with InTune a whole lot more, and now I am the proud owner of a couple of different phones. One is an older Apple iPhone 4s, the other is a Samsung Galaxy 4.  iOS and Android! Me! A bona fide Windows Fan Boi.

What can I report?

Adding both the new guys to my InTune management was a piece of cake. Simply adding my domain's email account to the phones was a piece of cake.

After doing that, I started to mess around with the remote wipes, each was done and each of the phones was totally factory reset with little or no surprise.

Once I had that all nice and stabilised, it was time to get into the process of applying apps to each of the devices. This has perhaps been the bigger learning curve for now, and I am still having a play. I'll write more when I have this properly nailed down, but I have learnt that while all free apps in Google Play are free apps, it would appear to not be the same with the Apple Store. In fact, so far (admittedly without much deep investigation) the only app I have deployed was Age of Empire, a game!  AND in order to get the iOS device managed properly, I had to create and import some certificates into InTune to progress. Apparently, I also have to learn about wrapping some apps in App policies (.xml) in order to have them apply.

As for the 'droid, I now have all the necessary tools that I have for my world. Strava, FitBit, and Training Peaks are all loaded against my phone. Plus a few worky things too.

This little post is just a teaser for now, but I am thoroughly enjoying all that InTune can offer.  At this point though, I would add that my current feel is that anyone looking to refresh their phone fleet, with a mind to managing the devices through InTune MDM, I would lean towards Windows Phone and Android.

Cheers,

Malc.

A re-boot of the blog

Been a while since I posted things, and I know that now it is time to really kick myself into gear.

This was an interesting week in the classroom..... the first 3 days were SQL 2014 query writing, and the last two days of the week was a Crystal Reports course. These two topics are so very close to each other, and yet with enough differences that you can really make a mess of things if you don't have your wits about you!

So anyway, what's been happening.  A whole lot, and I'll be turning this into a very regular posting from now on.
Here is the highlights package:

• Continuing running of the Wellington Windows Infrastructure and Azure Users Group
• Aquisition of a iPhone and Android for the furthering of my InTune learning
• Delivery of InTune user session to Singapore User Group
• Taking of, and learning SCCM
• Discovering new and exciting things in Azure and InTune
• Delivery of InTune session to CodeCamp Wellington

I'll fill in more details later, but in the next couple of weeks expect some writeups on the above, and new things to keep you interested.

Cheers,
Malc.

The joy of setting up course 20346B: Managing Office 365 Identities and Services

Here is a nice wee tale of the nuances of setting up for this course. I am writing this mainly for others who might already teach this course, so I presume that there's a little bit of inside knowledge along the way.

Ok, so in the latest little plot twist there is a new issue with the setup scripts. It is REALLY easy to fix, but a bit of a pain.

In the setup, you have to do get-azurepublishsettingsfile, then import-publishsettingsfile and after you've got that sorted, it's time to run the configure script.  And things fall undone. Quickly. Red text EVERYWHERE!

 
So what's the deal here? When you run the script, you're asked for numbers. First, you enter your CPLS ID which you then pad out with an extra 0 if you need it. We are 4232190 so I add a 0 to the end to be 42321900. You have to, as there is a check in the script to deal with it.  And then you add a 3 digit number for the student ID. We've all done it, you know there is nothing new there. What ends up happening is that to further 'uniquify' the lab IDs, the script appends today's date to give you a long string.  Mine today was 423219000071117.

Then, it adds the name lucstorage to the beginning of the name so eventually you end up with lucstorage423219000071117, a handy dandy unique 25 character string.

Seems harmless.

To many of us that have set this course up, we're used to seeing a bit of red in the Azure Powershell window from time to time. Sometimes it's cos we forgot the firewall, or didn't raise to admin level on the window.  In this new error, that isn't the cause.

Believe it or not, the storage that is built, has to have a name with between 3 and 24 characters, of course starting with lower case letters, but can include numbers!

To solve this for myself, I opened variables.ps1. Find the line that says @storagebase = "lucstorage" and change it to @storagebase = "lucstor"

After that, no more red text and perfect success for the setup.

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue yet? I gather I discovered it today as it's the first time that I have taught the course in a double number day, double number month! :-)  It was the beginning of Oct the last time I taught this, and prior to that, months with a single digit! Ha!

Hope this helps, if you do come across it.

Cheers,
Malc.




 

 

An intro to the blog.

 












Howdy all,



So I am Malcolm, usually called Malc (or other less savoury things), I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer, employed for the past 9 or so years by Auldhouse Computer Training Ltd.

I have a number of certs under my belt, and will update those as I go. My qualifications and interests in IT are quite varied, but always rock on back to a bit of a data bent.

With regards to the training I deliver, I believe the best results come from having a bit of fun while you train, and never be afraid to try something for the first time in front of a class.  It goes to show that things can work (or can go horribly wrong) in a "sterile" training lab environment, just as well as they can in the real world.

The idea behind this blog is to share some ideas and thoughts on what I do, be somewhat reflective on the previous week, or weeks courses that I have delivered, and hopefully give people a good laugh along the way.

Where I pick things up from other blogs and sites I'll link those too.  Knowledge shared means lightened workloads to me, and allows for greater progress in all things.

A few highlights, good for a chuckle, from the past few months.

• Sept 2013 - TechEd Exam Cram sessions delivered.  70-410, 70-411, 70-412
• Nov 2013 - Office 365 course, during which I demonstrated the Exchange Online feature of remote wiping data on a phone. I used my phone, and not knowing what to expect I assumed that I would simply remove the Office 365 connection to my phone. Next thing you know, my entire phone factory reset! Lesson learned, and a good laugh for the course.
• Dec 2013 - Microsoft Office 365 Road Show with Paul Bowkett of Microsoft. It was a hoot, and such a great guy to co-present with! We had a blast, and if you attended any of our sessions in Wellington, Auckland or Christchurch, THANKS! Paul's blog is here.
• Jan 2014 - Reset all Auldhouse Wellington classrooms, re cabled etc. Mint
• Jan 2014 - Decided to do a live Fail Over Cluster hot shut down with our classroom servers to demonstrate to a class just how effective it is.  Did a 5sec power button shutdown on cluster node 1, then brought it up again.  It took a second reboot, but life was peachy.  The class thought I was nuts to do it in our live environment, but the truth is, if you can't test DR while servers are under load (which wasn't too bad since only 3 courses that first week) then when can you? Ha!  

This week started with a Crystal Reports 2 day course, and Microsoft Course 6293 for the last three days. 

Well, that's all for now.  As the year winds on, and new things are found out and discovered, I'll be here writing my take on it.

Cheers,
Malc.