Many of you are joining our user group events on a regular basis and since years. Thanks to all of you, for this great community support! Yesterday, my buddy, Roger Pollini, and I defined the event dates for 2022. Find them bellow:
Of corse, its a free event! Jus make sure to click on “I’m going” 🙂 If you’re new, feel free to subscribe and join the first event in less than a month.
VENUE
Depending on the current pandemic situation, we try to to organize an in person event during May 2022. There is for sure no guarantee right know, that we can held this that way. However, we’re super happy to welcome you also remote and having your support!
SPEAKERS
This year, we will have some new speakers on the stage. This is super cool, as this is part of community work to give persons a chance to start their speaker journey. But for sure, we will also host some experienced speakers. If your a MVP or you would like to have a session, feel free to contact Roger or myself. The sessions are mainly held in German.
Thank you again for being a part of the Microsoft Cloud Workplace User Group!
This is a short post about how to use the serial number of your computer as computer name.
During a deployment, maybe a cloud deployment of your Windows 10/11 clients (not talking about Autopilot), you will have to define a computer name. The easiest way to get a random and never the same name, is to use the serial number.
Not all vendors do use the same style of the serial number. For example HP uses 11 characters while Fujitsu only has 10 (depends on the models as well). So let’s get started:
First we need to get the serial out of the device. I always use Get-ComputerInfo
Get-ComputerInfo
Be aware, that there is a small bug in the Paramater BiosSerialNumber. On some Windows versions (I guess all Windows 10) the parameter is called (missing an “i”):
BIOSSeralNumber
As a next step, you may would like to have a prefix within your computer name. If you decide to use a prefix, put that in a variable such as:
$prefix = "LDC-"
So let’s put it together using the command without a bug. This works on Windows 11. And then put the serial in to the variable $serial:
As a computer name (NetBIOS) has a limit of 15 characters, we need to shorten the serial to, let’s say, 10 characters (0, 10), starting from the beginning (0, 10):
$serial = $serial.substring(0, 10)
Now let’s put the computer name together into the $computername variable using the $prefix and the $serial variables:
$computername = $prefix + $serial
The result will looks like that (based on your hardware and serial):
LDC-01812637465
Finally run the rename computer cmdlet and reboot the machine. You computer has a new name with a prefix and a part of your serial.
Since years, it is pleasure to work and enjoy the Microsoft community. Ether going to any good events such as Experts Live Europe or also local driven communities. But of course, the pandemic made it not that easy during the last couple of month or better saying years.
For those who know me, I’m a positive thinking person and I’m sure it will getting better and we will be even getting much better to drive community events even during this hard times. This events give us the possibilities to talk to each other, being friendly and also to learn from friends and great persons!
This is actually the main reason for me to join or organize community events – be kind and learn!
This week we where able to held our (REMOTE) Cloud Workplace Meetup Number #10. To bad, we had to cancel one session from our buddy and fellow Timo Breuer, Senior IT-Security Consultant at dinext. pi-sec as he had a major incident to resolve. But his session will be covered in the next month, probably already in January 2022. Let’s see and stay tuned.
It was a pleasure to jump in with my session “Microsoft Information Protection – Getting started and keep an eye on your data!”. If you’re good in Swiss German or you want to learn the great dialect from Bern (by the way the capital city of Switzerland, yes it is not Zurich), then you should watch the recording of my session. Have fun!
I’m excited to be chosen as a speaker at the Workplace Ninja Summit Virtual Edition 2021. The summit 2021 is again held all virtual, starting today. The event is an IT community conference focused on Endpoint Management, ConfigMgr, Intune, Microsoft Security, Azure AD, PowerShell and Azure Virtual Desktop, with Microsoft MVPs, Microsoft Regional Directors and other industry experts. Check out the event website.
OUR SESSION
I will speak together with my buddy Michael Rueefli (Azure MVP) about Azure AD identities attack and defense. Our session title and speaking slot is:
Spy vs. Spy – Azure AD identities attack and defense – Session 2, 2PM, Room 2 – Use this link to go to the whole session catalog: LINK
SOME WORDS ABOUT Workplace Ninja Virtual Edition 2021
The event is all virtual, as mentioned above. This year, it is the second time that Workplace Ninja Summit Virtual will be held “virtual”.
Community leaders started two years ago with the event. If you are interested in Microsoft cloud topics, this is a must event. You can join all sessions using Microsoft Teams and as it is a real community event, it’s free. However, it needs a lot of working hours to raise an event like that. So, thanks a lot to the organizers!
Community You have the possibility to exchange and connect with other visitors and speakers of this event. Use this platform and the event as a virtual meeting zone and who knows… Possibly new synergies will arise. Would be cool to see you there, virtual!
Official hashtag used: #WPNinjS
So do not miss to check out the great speakers line-up. See you there!
Ever wanted to create an approval process for your Windows applications in Endpoint Manager? Some apps require approval as they generate licensing cost at the back end. Sure, you can use many solutions for that like Power Platform (Preferred if you’re not using Identity Governance), Active Roles Server, ServiceNow and more – you name it.
But actually there is a “built-in” solution for that. Not built in with MEM but built in with Azure and Identity Governance. If you’re licensed to use Identity Governance and you use it for services such as Privileged Identity Management (PIM) or Access Reviews your good to go. If not, you first have to onboard it. For the solution here, you need at least an Azure AD Premium P2 license or EMS E5/A5 as user.
In a first step create an application within MEM. Go to the MEM Portal https://endpoint.microsoft.com and select Apps, for example create a line-of-business app using a simple MSI. I have downloaded the latest MIP (AIP) client and uploaded it to Intune without any special configuration or silent install commands (for now).
In a second step, create a group with no user assignment and assign the group to the application created before . This could be an AD synced group or a cloud group. Still nothing special here.
Now the interesting part starts! Browse to Identity Governance in the Azure Portal / Azure Active Directory and start creating a new Access Package using Entitlement Mangement.
From the Basics settings provide a proper name and description, such as “APP – MIP Client (requires approval)”. This name will also be populated to your end-users (also the description).
Under Resource role select + Groups and Teams and browse for the group you have created earlier. In my case mem-app-u-mip-client. Don’t forget to select also the role the user will have within this group. Usually this is just the “Member” role.
On the Request page you will have 3 options you can select. In the case here, we will use For users in your directory and All members (excluding guests). This does guest users not allow to see or request this particular access package.
Enable the Require approval toggle to Yes. This will give you the options to configure the Approval flow. I have selected the following options, but of course your free to change them: – Require requestor justification: Yes – How many stages: 1 – First approver: “my demo user” – Decision in days: 14 (default) – Require approver justification: Yes – If no action taken, forward to alternate approvers?: No (advanced request) – Enable: Yes
Under Requestor information (preview) you have the option to define some specific questions for the requester of the package. For example, you can request to provide some more information about the reason of the usage of this particular app with some multiple choise values.
Within the Lifecycle options we can now define the time of availability of the Acccess Package itself. Let’s say, this access package is only available for the rollout of our MIP Client and we like to define a timeframe of 1 year (365 days) of availability (this is just a random pick) and we do not allow to extend access to the package.
As next we would also like to enable the Access Review of the package and check back within a couple of month who has access and if this access is still needed (Review of access to our Intune deployed application). The Reviewers could be a specific user (Application Owner for example) or a Self-review where the user has to review the access by himself. Choose the values they fit as its best to your use case.
Review and create your Access Package. This will populate a my access link myaccess.microsoft.com followed by your tenant name and the OpjectId of your Access package. This site is where all the packages and access reviews can be found, ether for the end user to request the package (application) or to review as an application owner.
Enduser experience
Your users are now able to browse to your organization myaccess site by browsing the URL https://myaccess.microsoft.com/ To request the application they select Access package, where our just created package APP – MIP Client (Require approval) will be listed. The request is super easy. The requester has to select + Request access – provide the required information such as the Business reason & justification (if configured within the package) and then to submit the request. During the request process, the user has the opportunity to see the current status of the request including the approval process under his Request history.
Approver experience
The configured approver of the package (which could also be the Manager, currently in Preview) will receive an email to approve or deny the request. As soon the access has been granted, the user account will be added to our created group and the user will receive the assigned application ether to install the application by himself using the Company Portal or if the assignment is set to required within MEM, the application will be forced to install.
Depending on the configured Access review time, the reviewer will receive a similar email to review the access. This could be Self-service for the user or another person within your organization.
Hope this helps to use Access package as your approval process for MEM deployed Windows applications. Let me know what you think! Stay save.
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