Having worked with Microsoft Intune a fair bit recently, in some clever ways like to extended System Centre Configuration Manager to the cloud for multi-factor authentication purposes, I’ve come to find Intune quite handy. In most ways it can be considered SCCM in the cloud which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In this post I’d like to quick fire off a whole bunch of handy Intune facts, figures and maybe other f-words for commonly asked questions I’ve been asked about the product suite…

What

• Microsoft Intune is a cloud based PC + mobile device management and security service.
• Available as a stand alone service or included in Office 365 subscriptions.
• There is no on-premises variant with the service being SaaS only
• Agents are deployed to devices which can be managed through the cloud based web portal
• There are 3 main web portals that are used with Intune
  • Account Portal
    • A central console or tenant that has all the device, user, license and administrative information. Think of this as similar to your Office 365 admin console.
  • Admin Console
    • A service specific administrative console where all policies and processes can be created and assigned to devices.
  • Company Portal
    • A company specific custom portal that users can access via the web or mirrored in the Company Portal app for Windows 8x, Windows Phone 8x, Android and iOS.
    • Users can view their managed devices and company published applications that can be deployed to their devices.

When

• Microsoft Intune, originally Microsoft Windows Intune was first publicly announced in July 2011.
• Since the initial launch the product has matured and moved ever closer to being a part of the Office 365 product suite.
• Initially the product only supported Windows workstation and server workloads, though now the platform compatibility has stretched across additional mobile platforms, and it is ever growing.

Where

• Microsoft Intune information home page
• Microsoft Intune Account Portal
• Microsoft Intune Admin Console
• Microsoft Intune Company Portal
  • Exact URL dependent on your tenant
• Microsoft Intune licensing PDF download - direct from Microsoft
• Getting started with Microsoft Intune: walk-through guide

Why

• Device choice
  • Users have the ability to register, enrol and manage their own device
  • Install corporate apps from the self-service Company Portal
  • Work apps are separate to personal apps on the device
  • Various OS platforms available which provides a very wide range for device choice
• Data protection
  • Secure corporate data through polices and settings pushed out from the Admin Console
  • Secure Exchange email, OneDrive for Business documents
  • Remote wipe device or specific apps, settings
• Enterprise integration
  • Extend SCCM to the cloud through integration with Intune
  • However- bear in mind when this is configured, SCCM takes over and all management is handled in SCCM and NOT in Intune!!! -IMPORTANT
  • If SCCM is going to remain on-premises for some time, Intune provides a great way to extend SCCM to be able to manage mobile devices, while keeping existing policies and configurations intact, even applying those to mobile or external devices
• No infrastructure required
  • Being a SaaS service, there is no on-premises infrastructure required to use only Intune.
  • If you want to leverage SCCM and extend that, then that’s a different story and the on-premises SCCM infrastructure needs to remain indefinitely
• 3 licensing tiers
  • Flexible licensing to be able to leverage what makes sense
    • Intune license > access to Intune service and all its features
    • Intune with SA > evergreen Intune that will see updates applied to the tenant forever
    • Intune + SCCM > extend SCCM to the cloud
• Windows targeted MDM
  • Functionality build into Windows workstation OS, Workplace Join and via downloaded Company Portal app, that is focused on Windows workstation device management first, and additional platforms second

How

• How to provision an Intune tenant / subscription
  • Anyone can sign up for a free trial of Intune
  • No linked to any Office 365 or Azure tenant, a new service can be signed up for in 5 minutes
  • Click here to sign up for Microsoft Intune
  • If you’re now happy with the service, you can upgrade to a full tenant by:
  • Go to Intune Account Portal
  • Click Purchases
  • Click Buy Now
  • On the Customize your purchase, complete purchase and upgrade to a licensed tenant
• How to allow for single sign on with Intune
  • Intune can be considered the same configuration as Office 365 and Azure for SSO
  • The ‘back end’ relies on Azure AD
  • To leverage SSO for a complete federated identify with common credentials and passwords:
    • Deploy Azure AD Sync
    • Deploy ADFSv3 + ADFS WAP
    • Configure services and tenant
    • More details to come in another blog post
• How to join a device to Intune to be managed: cloud vs hybrid
  • There are two main ways to join a device to Intune
  • The first option for management is through the Intune agent
    • In the Intune Administration Console
    • Go to Admin
    • Go to Client Software Download
    • You can now download Microsoft_Intune_Setup.exe which will deploy the complete Intune agent on the desired machine for management
  • The second option for management is through workplace join and the Company Portal app
    • Again in MFA in Office 365 using Intune Part 5 I explained how to complete a Workplace Join
    • From here, the next step is getting the Company Portal app
    • The Company Portal app is available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8x
    • When you launch the app and sign in, with all the correct config it will find your tenant
    • From there enrol the device for management, though this wont install an Intune Agent
      • Rather the app will essentially be the agent and all config “passes through” the app
• How to deploy an SSL certificate to a mobile device via Intune and SCCM > to be used for MFA
  • I’ve written an extensive series on how to do this on this blog
  • Check out these posts:
    • MFA in Office 365 using Intune Part 1
    • MFA in Office 365 using Intune Part 2
    • MFA in Office 365 using Intune Part 3
    • MFA in Office 365 using Intune Part 4
    • MFA in Office 365 using Intune Part 5

Although this blog post is not in a chronological order in terms of Intune, I hope you enjoyed the overview information that should be useful for any pre-sales or design docs where quick info on Intune as a whole is necessary.