SCCM 1909 Technical Preview.
Office 365 ProPlus health dashboard
As you plan your Office deployments, use the new Office 365 ProPlus health dashboard. It provides health insights for devices with Office 365 ProPlus to help identify issues.
The dashboard shows three main areas of insight:
- Add-in issues
- Macro issues
- Device overall issues
Prerequisites
Client versions:
- Office 365 ProPlus
- The latest version of the Configuration Manager client
As you plan your Office deployments, use the new Office 365 ProPlus health dashboard. It provides health insights for devices with Office 365 ProPlus to help identify issues.
Orchestration group to better control the deployment of software updates to devices. Many server administrators need to carefully manage updates for specific workloads and automate behaviors in between. For example:
- As the software updates administrator, you manage all updates for your organization.
- You have one large collection for all servers and one large collection for all clients. You deploy all updates to these collections.
- The SQL administrators want to control all the software installed on the SQL servers. They want to patch five servers in a specific order. Their current process is to manually stop specific services before installing updates and then restart the services afterward.
- You create an orchestration group and add all five SQL servers. You also add pre- and post-scripts, using the PowerShell scripts provided by the SQL administrators.
- Without any changes to your existing deployments, the software update process is fully automated for the five SQL servers in the orchestration group.
An orchestration group gives you the flexibility to update devices based on a percentage, a specific number, or an explicit order. You can also run a PowerShell script before and after the devices run the update deployment.
Members of an orchestration group can be any Configuration Manager client, not just servers. The configuration of the orchestration group applies to the devices for all software update deployments to any collection that contains an orchestration group member. Other deployment behaviors still apply. For example, maintenance windows and deployment schedules.
Improvements to BitLocker management – Starting in technical preview version 1905, you could use Configuration Manager to install and manage the Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) client. This release now adds support for integrated reports, a helpdesk portal for administration and monitoring, and a self-service portal for users.
Extend and migrate an on-premises site to Microsoft Azure – This new tool helps you to programmatically create Azure virtual machines (VMs) for Configuration Manager. It can install with default settings site roles like a passive site server, management points, and distribution points. Once you validate the new roles, use them as additional site systems for high availability. You can also remove the on-premises site system role and only keep the Azure VM role.
Additional CMPivot entities and enhancements – Based on user-voice feedback, we’ve added a number of new CMPivot entities and entity enhancements to aid in troubleshooting and hunting. We’ve included entities to query:
- Windows event logs
- File content
- Dlls loaded by processes
- Azure Active Directory information
- Endpoint protection status
This release also includes several other enhancements to CMPivot.
Task sequence download on demand over the internet – Starting in this release, the task sequence engine can download packages on demand from a content-enabled CMG or a cloud distribution point. This change provides additional flexibility with your Windows 10 in-place upgrade deployments to internet-based devices.
Improved language support in task sequence – Starting in technical preview version 1908.2, you could specify the default keyboard layout (Input locale) during OS deployment. This release adds further control over language configuration during this process. If you’re already applying these language settings, this change can help you simplify your OS deployment task sequence. Instead of using multiple steps per language or separate scripts, use one instance per language of the built-in Apply Windows Settings step with a condition for that language.
Use the Apply Windows Settings task sequence step to configure the following new settings:
- System locale
- UI language
- UI language fallback
- User locale
Support for Windows Insider – You can now service and update devices running Windows Insider Preview builds with Configuration Manager. This change means you can manage these devices without changing your normal processes or enabling Windows Update for Business. You can download feature updates and cumulative updates for Windows Insider Preview builds into Configuration Manager just like any other Windows 10 update or upgrade.
