Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service that enables Mobile device management (MDM) and also Mobile application management (MAM). You’ll have full control over how devices are managed and main in your organization. These include Windows, IOS/tablets/Android devices.
Leveraging app policies, you can easily create policies that would policies to control specific applications in your organization. For example, you can create a policy on IOS devices to prevent your users to screenshot on those specific devices to preserve sensitive data being sent outside of the organizations.
There are many benefits when leveraging in tune and having a better quality of controlling your applications and corporate devices. I will outline 11 benefits of leveraging Microsoft Intune.
1. Decreasing the time IT spends on mananging and retiring devices.
Windows autopilot helps organizations pre-configure new devices and get them ready for production use. Autopilot helps decrease the time IT spends simply because of the process that it provides.
Windows autopilot provides IT the ability to recover, repurpose and reset devices on demand. This is a solution that provides no infrastructure to get the benefits of devices to be autopiloted with a robust process that lifts a heavy burden on your IT teams.
Windows autopilot’s full lifecycle both helps users and IT teams through the experience of setting up devices right to end of life.
What is the process of Autopilot?
The process to get started with Autopilot is seamless and straightforward. As it stands, autopilot uses the optimized version of Windows 10 and this is already installed when the device is sent out. This is so that you don’t have to maintain images or drivers for every device model.
The major benefit here is that traditionally we would re-image the device, but now the existing windows 10 installation can be converted into a state that can install the apps needed for the device, change the edition of Windows 10 (Pro > Enterprise) and apply certain settings and policies dictated by Intune.
Some benefits and key take aways
- The first benefit is that it decreases the amount time spent building and managing devices from an enterprise level
- It reduces any infrastrucutre that would be tradionally required to manage and main these devices
- Decreases the burden of IT teams and increases the level of ease for your end users which ultimately benefits the representation of IT.
2. Automated process for setting up devices for end users
Traditionally the ability to automate a process of setting up a new started and their device was a nightmare for helpdesk staff, as this was nearly impossible.
The process before was to wipe everything on a device, re-install the Windows 10 > manually add all of the apps needed for the particular user and get the user to sign a few docs before handing over the device.
The time spent previously took a significant amount of time by ensuring each device had a specific image. But windows autopilot makes the approach so much more seamless and saves ALOT of time.
All the user needs to do is just turn on their device > connect to wifi and their device is ready to use. From the perspective of IT, we would just simply connect to the network and verify the account details, that is pretty much it, the rest is just automated.
So what are the major benefits of Windows Autopilot here:
- You can automaticaaly join all of the device to Azure Active Directory (AAD) or on-premises Active directory (Hybrid AD join).
- Restrict the Administrator account creation when setting up the account
- Make the OOBE more customizable for your organisation
3. Accessing business apps using a newly secured method
Using intune can protect your data and provide you the ability to have much more control over it. Some ways of meeting this objective are by ensuring that the users and devices meet specific requirements set by your org and this is done by compliance policies.
Overview of compliance policies in Intune
Compliance policies in Intune help protect the companies data by ensuring that users are adhering to the policies set to users and devices.
- Setting the rules for users and devices to meet compliance requirements
- Usually is coupled with conditional access polcies (CAP) which blocks users or devices that do not meet the minimum requirements.
Compliance Policies Settings
These are settings that affect the whole organization which ensures that Intune’s compliance engages with the devices that are owned by the organization. Settings are different from the settings that are configured of a device compliance setting
4. Check devices enrolled that access company resources
Securing corporate data while leverages the flexibility of mobility within your workforce is one of the biggest challenges in IT. Intune has made it very simple and easy from securing the company data and
It is not much more secure using Intune to access your organization’s resources. When the devices have been enrolled with intune, you can leverage the company portal app to gain secure access to your emails, files, and apps.
App protection policies are used in intune which is a way of adding additional layers of security when accessing applications.
Some benefits of these are:
- Ability to restrict which specif capps are used to access corp data
- Works well with conditional-access policies
- Provides secure access to organisation data with managed and unmanged devices
5. Export reports on users and devices that are compliant
Microsoft intune provides admins to report on several reports. It is useful to monitor what is happening to endpoints across the organization. However, there are many types of reports in Intune that you can use such as device health, device compliance, and the list goes on.
There are permissions levels when it comes to viewing these reports and even exporting them for additional usage. There are mainly three types of admins that can access these reports which are:
- Global admins
- Intune admins
- Custom roles assigned reader roles
7. No infrastructure required to purchase and maintain hardware on-premises
Although there are some dependencies with on-prem infrastructure, when you have Intune up and running, there is nothing to worry about as everything is stored in the cloud. Microsoft intune provides a scalable cloud architecture that is regularly updated.
8. Troubleshooting app management intune all from the portal
If you believe that you have to deal with a user in person when they have app issues, think again! One of the benefits of having Intune is that you can troubleshoot and resolve the issue using the intune portal.
Sometimes app installations can easily fail. It can be challenging when trying to find out the solution to the issue. Within the intune portal, you can find out the failure details which you’re able to solve the app issues at hand.
Directly going into the troubleshooting pane and clicking on the app that has filed, intune will provide an error code which then you can look at and solve the problem at hand.
NOTE: for any specific error code that Intune provides, take a look at the app installation error reference that intune provides.
9. Licensing structure has become more flexible and cost effective
Instead of purchasing individual licenses for a per-user license. Instead, you can purchase the Enterprise mobility suite which would contain all of the core features that a user would need, and Intune being a part of that.
10. Dedicated support for intune based
As Intune can of course have some errors that you can wrap your head around or the documentation does not make much sense to you, support is always there to assist with specialist teams and provides best practices tailored to your environment.
Microsoft Intune offers a global support network through email or phone. This is a 24/7 operation with every intune subscription which helps many individuals resolve any potential problems that would arise.
