SCCM 1910 Technical Preview

SCCM 1910 Technical Preview.

Main feature

Administrators can now deploy Microsoft Edge, version 77 and later and its policies to users from the Configuration Manager console. Through this integration, administrators can now easily deploy the new version of Microsoft Edge from the Beta and Dev channels. Each release incorporates learnings and improvements from our customers and community. The Dev channel is updated weekly, and the Beta channel is updated every six weeks. Administrators can also deploy a specific version of a channel if they wish to disable automatic updates and test a particular version.

Another features

Include custom configuration baselines as part of compliance policy assessment – You can now add evaluation of custom configuration baselines as a compliance policy assessment rule. When you create or edit a configuration baseline, you have a new option, Evaluate this baseline as part of compliance policy assessment. When adding or editing a compliance policy rule, you have a new condition called Include configured baselines in compliance policy assessment.

When a user is part of a collection targeted with a compliance policy that includes the rule condition Include configured baselines in compliance policy assessment, any baselines with the Evaluate this baseline as part of compliance policy assessment option selected that are deployed to the user or the user’s device are evaluated for compliance.

Improvements to app groups – Starting in current branch version 1906, you can create a group of applications to send to a device collection as a single deployment. This technical preview release improves upon this feature:

• Users can Uninstall the app group in Software Center.
• You can deploy an app group to a user collection.

Reclaim SEDO lock – If the Configuration Manager console stops responding, you can be locked out of making further changes until the lock expires after 30 minutes. This lock is part of the Configuration Manager SEDO (Serialized Editing of Distributed Objects) system. Starting in this technical preview release, you can clear your lock on any object in the Configuration Manager console.

Attach files to feedback – You can now choose to attach log and diagnostic files when you use Send a Frown in the Configuration Manager console to send feedback to Microsoft. This additional information can help us more quickly determine the cause of the problem.

Office 365 ProPlus Pilot and Health Dashboard – There’s a new experience to help admins create pilot collections for getting started with Office 365 ProPlus deployments. We know from customer feedback that many enterprises don’t immediately deploy Office 365 ProPlus. Instead, they prefer to run a pilot on a small set of devices before completing their rollout. The Office 365 ProPlus Pilot and Health Dashboard provides a recommendation for pilot devices based on add-in inventory.

Generate pilot

Generate a pilot recommendation from a limiting collection at the click of a button. As soon as the action is launched, a background task starts calculating your pilot collection. Your limiting collection must contain at least one device with an Office version that isn’t ProPlus.

Recommended pilot devices

Recommended pilot devices are a minimal set of devices representing all installed add-ins across the limiting collection you used when generating the pilot. Drill down to get a list of these devices. Then use the details to exclude any devices from the pilot if needed.

Deploy pilot

Once you accept your pilot devices, deploy Office 365 Proplus to the pilot collection using the phased deployment wizard. Admins can define the pilot and limiting collection in the wizard to manage deployments.

Health data

Once Office 365 Proplus is installed, enable health data on your pilot devices. The health data gives you insight into which add-ins and macros don’t meet health goals. The Devices ready to deploy chart identifies non-pilot devices that are ready for deployment by using the health insights. Get a count of devices that are sending health data from the Devices sending health data chart.

Known issues

If a standard prefix is used in naming Office files, it may be difficult to tell files apart when troubleshooting a problem, such as a macro issue. Configuration Manager obfuscates the file names, meaning files named 2019_Q3_Results.xlsm and 2019_Q4_Results.xlsm will both be identified as 20*.xlsm.

Client diagnostic actions – Based on UserVoice feedback, there are new device actions for Client Diagnostics in the Configuration Manager console. This release includes the following actions:

• Enable verbose logging: Change the global log level for the CCM component to verbose, and enable debug logging.
• Disable verbose logging: Change the global log level to default, and disable debug logging.

Improvements to console search results – This release includes the following improvements to search in the Configuration Manager console based on your feedback:

• You can now use the All Subfolders search option from the Driver Packages and Queries nodes.
• When a search returns more than 1,000 results, now select the OK button on the notice bar to view more results.

New task sequence variable for Windows 10 in-place upgrade – You can now set a new task sequence variable SetupCompletePause. When you assign a value in seconds to this variable, the Windows setup process delays that amount of time before it starts the task sequence. This timeout provides the Configuration Manager client additional time to initialize and may help to address timing issues on high performance devices.

Improvements to Windows Virtual Desktop support – Configuration Manager current branch version 1906 introduced support for Windows Virtual Desktop. If you require user policy in this scenario, and accept any potential performance impact, you can now configure a client setting to enable user policy. In the Client Policy group, configure the following setting: Enable user policy for multiple user sessions.

Known issues

Task sequences aren’t available to PXE or media

If you deploy a task sequence for PXE or media (USB or DVD), the client doesn’t receive the policy. The following message is in smsts.log:

There are no task sequences available to this computer.

Workaround

Start the task sequence from Software Center.