Introduction

Configuration Manager technical preview version 2005 is out and here’s a look at some of the features. This is one amazing release, so many great features !

Note: Many of the features in this release depend on your first enabling Tenant Attach, to learn how to do that see my previous blog posts here and here.

Tenant attach: Install an application from the admin center

You need the following setup..

• Enable the optional feature Approve application requests for users per device. For more information, see Enable optional features from updates.

• At least one application deployed to a device collection with the An administrator must approve a request for this application on the device option set on the deployment. For more information, see Approve applications.
  • User targeted applications or applications without the approval option set don’t appear in the application list.

In the Admin center, locate your device and click on Applications. If your application matches the pre-reqs above then it should be listed.

Click the app will bring up options to Install or Retry installation. In addition, it will list the status of whether it’s installed or not.

After clicking Install the app should install (or display an error if something went wrong).

Totally awesome !

Tenant attach: Device timeline in the admin center

Select the collection you specified in Tenant Attach (1), select an active device (2), right click, choose Start (3), select Admin Center Preview (4).

In the Admin Center Preview, click on timeline.

As you can see I’ve no results so I looked at the docs and checked the pre-reqs.

Prerequisites

You’ll need to meet all of the prerequisites for Tenant attach: ConfigMgr client details:

• An environment that’s tenant attached with uploaded devices.
• One of the following browsers:
  • Microsoft Edge, version 77 and later
  • Google Chrome
• The user account has been discovered with both Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) user discovery and Active Directory user discovery.
  • Meaning the user account needs to be a synced user object in Azure.

Additionally, you’ll need the following items:

• Enable Endpoint analytics data collection in Configuration Manager:
  1. In the Configuration Manager console, go to Administration > Client Settings > Default Client Settings.
  2. Right-click and select Properties then select the Computer Agent settings.
  3. Set Enable Endpoint analytics data collection to Yes.
     • Only events collected after the client receives this policy will be visible in the admin center preview. Events prior to receiving the policy won’t be accessible.

And I was missing the Enable Endpoint analytics data collection option, so i flipped it to Yes.

and after waiting a while… and syncing policy on the client via the new client actions (they were kind of hard to find in the endpoint manager console…

the data started coming in..

you can click on an event for more details

and after some time the Timeline will update with lots of activity

Improvements to BitLocker task sequence steps

Now you can finally specify encryption settings in the BitLocker steps in a task sequence, wow, this has been a long time coming, but check this out !!

and you can do the same in the Enable BitLocker step

During OSD, you’ll no longer have to run powershell script to set the Algorithm, it’ll be set as per the drop down on the relevant BitLocker step.

Tenant attach: CMPivot from the admin center

Look at this, running CMPivot queries directly from your tenant ! Such power !!

Tenant attach: Run Scripts from the admin center

You can now also run scripts directly from the admin center.

and after the script has run it’ll display the result.

VPN boundary type

You can now create one VPN boundary type

Task sequence media support for cloud-based content

Once you’ve verified the settings are correct, such as below.

and you’ve distributed task sequence content to your CMG

Start the task sequence from boot media or PXE on the client. When the task sequence runs, it will download content from the cloud-based sources. Review smsts.log on the client.

To see what happens, look at this blog post.

Such an amazing release !