Author: Ola Ström

Categories
Windows 365

Boot directly to your Cloud PC

Windows 365 Boot was first announced at Ignite in 2022, but no dates were announced at that point.

But now it has finally happened! Windows 365 Boot is in public preview and ready for you to test! There is, however, at the time being a need to use Windows 11 Insider Preview for this to work.

Windows 365 Boot is a concept which is exactly what it sounds like, the possibility to boot your physical PC straight into your Cloud PC. One could almost argue that this is a Windows take on a thin client concept but based on Windows 11 instead of some Linux distribution. We will see where this will take us in the future, but I can see a lot of cool scenarios for this combined with Windows 365 Frontline!

A while back, I wrote a post about creating a shared Windows 365 kiosk setup for Windows 10 or Windows 11, a poor man’s Windows 365 boot for impatient administrators. But now we have the real thing, so let’s set it up!

Setting up boot to cloud

The simplest way to setup Windows 365 Boot is to use the Microsoft provided guided scenario, which can be found here.

The guided scenario will help you create all policies and profiles you will need for this but do keep in mind that you still need to create your Windows 365 provisioning policy!

The first step in the guided scenario will give you an overview of what will be done and what it’s used for. If you have ever used guided scenarios before, this will be a familiar experience!

On the next step, we will add a prefix for our policies. This would typically be something you use in your naming convention. Please be aware that Microsoft only allows you to set the prefix of the names, not the whole policy name. If you want to change this to follow your naming convention, you will need to do that manually once everything has been created.

Next step is to set how updates should be handled. I’ve just added 0 on all values for days and gone with the default active hours, but this would typically reflect your normal patching/upgrade cadence.

On the next step, we can add some additional settings. I’ve just added a Wi-Fi profile, but you can add a VPN profile if needed as well. The last step on this tab is to select the language/region. I’ve selected to go with the operating system default that I have on the device I will deploy to.

On the last step before the automated creation starts, we will take care of assignments. You can either create a new group or use an existing group (please give us this feature in the other assignment flows Microsoft!). I’ve selected to create a new one called All W365 BtC Devices.

Once we have reviewed our settings, the deployment of policies, profiles and groups will start. You can follow and monitor the deployment (much like in Azure). For me, this was a fast process.

Getting the client ready!

As I mentioned, you need Windows 11 Insider Preview to be able to use Windows 365 Boot. You can either upgrade your machine manually or use Intune to upgrade your machine to the Insider Preview Dev channel.

You can modify the update policy created to allow the Insider Preview Dev channel for your Windows 365 Boot machine (please keep in mind that this is a preview) or you can create a new policy for this. What you are looking to enable is the following.

To upgrade your machine manually to Windows Insider Preview, go to Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider Program and opt in for insider builds on the machine.

ATTENTION!!

Don’t forget to add your devices to the group you assigned your Windows 365 Boot policies to, otherwise nothing will happen!

What I’ve also found is that you need to reset your device for this to work to 100%. At least my clients, if not reset, are not able to connect to the Cloud PCs. So hot tip!

The experience

When our computer is running Windows 11 Insider Preview and has gotten all out new Intune policies and profile, the magic will happen!

When the computer boots, it will take you to the Windows 365 Boot sign in page instead of the regular Windows sign in. From here, you will sign straight into your Cloud PC instead of your local PC!

Categories
Tips & Tricks Windows 365

Session time limit for Windows 365 Frontline

Since we now have successfully set up and provisioned Windows 365 Frontline in our environment, we need to add some additional layers of configuration to make operations as smooth as possible, and especially to make sure that we use the licenses in the best way possible.

With Windows 365 Frontline, each license is reserved as long as the user has the session running. This means that users could potentially have active sessions but are idle which would result in them locking one license.

Since users might forget to end the session, you can configure a policy that will end idle sessions for the end-user.

Create the policy

To create the policy, head over to Intune (https://intune.microsoft.com) and navigate to Devices > Windows > Configuration profiles and select “+ Create profile“.

Select the profile type to be Settings catalog and press Create.

Give your profile a name that makes sense to you and your organisation, I will go with something that follow my name standard for my environment that indicates it’s for Windows 365 Frontline and what the profiles does. When you have given the profile a name, press Next.

Select “+ Add setting” to open the settings picker.

In the settings picker, search for session time limits and select the category for Session Time Limits.

In the settings name section, check the box for “End session when time limits are reached“ and “Set time limit for active but idle Remote Desktop Services sessions“, and your setting will appear in the policy. Once you have selected the setting name, close the fly-out settings picker.

Enable the settings and choose the time limit that matches your needs and corporate policies. In this example I’ve selected 1 hour, which is good value to start with. Once you have enabled these settings, press Next.

Unless you use Scope tags you can skip this section and move right to Assignments where we will deploy this towards all our Windows 365 Frontline devices. I’m doing this by assigning the policy to the built in All devices group and applying a filter I’ve created for Windows 365 Frontline.

The rule syntax you want to use when creating a filter for Windows 365 Frontline machines is at least this one, but it can of course have additional lines depending on your needs:

(device. Model -startsWith "Cloud PC Frontline")

Once you have made the assignments as needed, press Next and then Create.

Your policy will now assigned to all your Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PCs and you can track the progress in Intune by looking at the policy.

Categories
Windows 365

Windows 365 Frontline – Getting started!

Windows 365 Frontline is still in public preview, but you can sign-up for the preview on this link! Since it’s still in preview, there is currently no information on pricing.

When you have gotten yourself licenses it’s time to configure, and since this is Windows 365 you do everything from Microsoft Intune.

One thing that differs the Frontline version from the Enterprise version is how licenses are assigned. For Enterprise you assign a license to a user to provision a Cloud PC, but for Frontline this works differently. You never assign the license to a user, and we will cover what you do instead further down in the post. It’s really clever!

Setting up a frontline Cloud PC

What you will need for this, except for the obvious Microsoft Intune and all its pre-requisites, is of course the Windows 365 Frontline license. This license gives you the right to provision 3 Cloud PCs per license. What you would typically also add to this is a Microsoft 365 F3 or E3/E5 license (or equivalent licensing) to gain all the features needed for managing and working with the digital workplace.

You will also need a few groups (Azure AD groups or synced on-premises AD groups) with the users you are providing with a Cloud PC, this could e.g., be your IT Service Desk team.

Once we have that in place, we can start configuring!

Head over to https://intune.microsoft.com and navigate to Devices > Windows 365 and select the “Provisioning policies” tab.

Click on the “+ Create policy” button to create your new Windows 365 Frontline provisioning policy.

On the “General” step, give your profile a good name and make sure to select Frontline as license type. Then select the join type you would like to use, followed by the network settings. For this example, we will user Azure AD join and Microsoft Hosted network, and we will place the Cloud PCs in Sweden Central. When done, click Next.

In the next step, we will select which image we will use. In this case, we will use the default value and just click Next.

In the next step, we will apply a custom naming convention to differentiate these from our regular Cloud PCs, but this is mostly for my own convenience, and you can leave this to default. We will also add these computers to Windows Autopatch since I have that active in my environment. When done, click the Next button.

In the next step, this is where the magic happens. Since you never assign licenses directly to a user you will need to add which groups should get Cloud PCs based on this policy, but also which license these groups should use. You can add multiple groups and have different machine sizes assigned to the separate groups. In this example, since I only have one license type, we will assign the same license to the same groups.

You will also be able to see how many Cloud PCs you have left to assign.

Once you have set up your groups and assigned the licenses to them, click on the Next button to review your settings before creating the policy. If everything is in order, click Create.

Monitor Cloud PC provisioning

Once you have created the provisioning policy and populated the assigned groups, your Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PCs will start to provision, and you can as always track this in the “All Cloud PCs” tab. What I’ve found is that I need to clear any filters applied before I can see the Frontline machines, so if you don’t see them just clear the filter.

Once the Cloud PCs are provisioned, they will get name based on what we set in the naming template part of the provisioning policy and your Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PCs are ready to use!

Connecting to Cloud PC Frontline

As with all other Cloud PCs, there are a few different ways to connect to your Cloud PC Frontline, but the preferred way should always be using the Windows 365 app since this provides the best end-user experience.

Once you sign in the to the Windows 365 application, you will see all your Cloud PCs listed. You will see both your assigned Enterprise and Frontline Cloud PCs. This will look similar in the Windows 365 web portal as well.

As you can see in the picture, the Cloud PC Frontline machines are tagged with the word “Frontline” which provides me as an end-user a great way to differentiate the two different versions from each other. As you can also see, I can have several Cloud PC Frontlines assigned to me based on different profiles.

When you click connect, the initial connection will take a little longer and you will see this ribbon on the Cloud PC.

One the machine has booted; you will get a pop-up telling you to make sure to disconnect when you are done since the disconnection is what makes the license available for other users. The time-out time can also be set with policy on the Cloud PC using Intune.

Once I confirm the connection, my Cloud PC will boot up and my session will start.

From here, things are just as with my regular Cloud PC except that applications will be closed, and the Cloud PC will be turned off when I leave the session which results in that I will need to start my applications again. It is not that different from a physical PC which is turned off.

Remote user actions

In the Windows 365 app, as long as your Cloud PC Frontline is up and running, you can perform remote actions such as restart, troubleshoot or restore. But as soon as it’s powered down, you can only see system information and rename your Cloud PC.

Categories
Windows 365

Windows 365 Frontline – Let’s talk about it

Updated on 20th of April 2023 based on feedback around license assignments.

At Ignite 2022, Microsoft announced that they were working on something they called “Windows 365 for Shift Workers” and a couple of weeks ago this was released in public preview under the name “Windows 365 Frontline” on April 6, 2023.

But what is Windows 365 Frontline and how is that different from the regular Windows 365?

The biggest difference is the license model to be honest. There are technical differences as well for admins, but for the end-user the experience is the same to be honest. Users still get their personal machine, but when the user ends their session, the machine is shut down instead of kept in the state it was left.

But going back to the license, which I think is the most interesting part here. The current setup is that there is a 3:1 ratio on the license, 3 users can be assigned to one license, but you can only use one license/machine at the time. And this is where the confusion begins since it’s positioned to be for shift workers BUT there are no integrations towards any scheduling system for license handling at this point. But this is only the beginning of the frontline user story for Windows 365!

Let’s pretend you have a scenario where your users work shifts to cover the day. The number of shifts you have during the day doesn’t really matter in this sense. What is important is the number of concurrent users you have, you need to make sure that you can cover the number of users who are active at the same time, and the same license can be shared over different departments.

The licens is, like Windows 365 and Microsoft 365 licenses, assigned on a tenant level. Which means; if you have as many licenses as you will have concurrent users you are good to go. You never assign a specific “third” of a license to a user, you don’t even assign the license. You just say that “this group is eligible to use the frontline worker setup” in your provisioning policy, which is a lot different from the Enterprise setup.

This could however of course mean that you have “more” licenses than you need since it might not add up perfectly. But given that you have the license on a tenant level, this means you can share your licenses over several scenarios/teams. But as of right now, this is what it looks like and it’s still in preview.

Image: Microsoft

One important thing with Windows 365 Frontline workers though, we still don’t know what the license cost for this will as of writing this. As GA is set to around June 2023 according to the Microsoft public roadmap, this will be clearer in the coming months.

The second thing around Windows 365 Frontline to remember is that this is not a “Windows 365 version of AVD Multisession”, this is pooled licenses where end-users get their own, personal Cloud PC, not a shared host like multisession. So, the end-users will get a full Cloud PC, it will just not be available for them 24/7 as with the Enterprise version.

In an upcoming blog post, we will dig deeper into how you configure this in your environment, and what the user experience is like!

In the meantime, you can read more about Windows 365 Frontline in the Microsoft release which you can find here.

Categories
Windows 365

Custom name for Cloud PC

Giving computers custom names is something which is somewhat of a hot potato. We have been doing it for years, and I’ve even blogged about it previously (olastrom.com – Naming conventions). It’s something which is important for some, but from an asset perspective it has kind of played out its role since it is not persistent.

However, one thing that has been a really important thing for some, has been the possibility to configure the naming convention for Windows 365 Cloud PCs which has not been possible. Until now!

With the update in the end of March 2023, this is now doable. It follows the same pattern as the naming convention for Windows Autopilot enrolled devices. You can set a prefix followed by variables. For Cloud PCs, these are a bit different, but follow the same idea.

As you can see by the picture, the name can be between 5 and 15 characters and can include some additional characters except for numbers and letters. The computer name MUST include at least 5 random characters using %RAND:y% where y is the number of random alphanumeric characters. I can however leave out the username and only use random characters.

Configure Cloud PC naming

To configure Cloud PC naming, you can either create a new provisioning policy or change an already existing one. In this example, I will change one of my existing policies. This new setting is by default off in all existing policies and you will need to actively set this for new policies.

Head into Microsoft Intune (intune.microsoft.com) and navigate to Devices > Windows 365 and select the Provisioning Policies tab.

Either select “+ Create policy” or modify an existing policy. I’ve chosen to update my existing policy for my Swedish users. When you get to the “Configuration” step in the policy, you can enable the Cloud PC naming by checking the check-box. It will then display the option to enter a custom name.

As you can see by my example, I’ve chosen to set the policy to give my Cloud PC a name which is CPC followed by five random alphanumeric characters followed by SWE. So, the name could end up being CPC-ABC12-SWE.

Conclusion

“With great power comes great responsibility”. Use naming wisely. To be honest, for Cloud PC naming makes slightly more sense since we don’t have serial numbers or such as an identified. However, naming will change once re-deployed since we have a random part of the name if is enforced. But with this function we can adapt it to fit with the rest of our naming conventions a bit more. You could even just set the same as for all other PCs (except you will get alphanumeric and not numeric random characters).

Categories
Intune

Intune Suite – What’s in it for me?

Microsoft finally released the long-awaited Intune Suite, or as it is called in Intune “add-ons”.

But what is the Intune Suite and why should I even care? That’s what I’m set out to cover in this blog post, and we will take a look at what there is right now and what’s to come.

One major change happened when this was introduced, and that is how Intune is licensed. Or at least it got some new names. Microsoft Intune Plan 1 is what previously was just called Intune and is included in the Microsoft 365 and EMS plans. This will give you the core Intune features as you have been using them today (with some exceptions).

Then we have Microsoft Intune Plan 2 which are some add-ons to plan 1 including Microsoft Intune Tunnel for Mobile Application Management, which will give you an option to use Intune Tunnel together with your MAM enabled applications. And then we also have Microsoft Intune management of specialty devices, which enables you to manage specialty devices in Intune such as AR/VR devices, conference room meeting devices and large smart screen devices.

For Plan 1, there is also a possibility to buy Remote Help, Endpoint Privilege Management, Advanced Endpoint Analtics and the other upcoming features as standalone services to your Plan 1.

Intune Suite – premium features for Intune

The Intune Suite is a packaged deal which includes all the bells and whistles. You get Plan 1 and Plan 2, but also all the nice extra add-ons. Today, this list is quite limited since it will only get you Plan 2, MS Intune Tunnel for MAM and Remote Help on-top of your Plan 1 licens (which you got from your M365 license anyway). BUT, and this is the selling point, you will get all the upcoming features once they are released.

The two already released premium features (if we disregard the Plan 2 features), are by them self really good products. I’ve previously covered the Remote Help app which since then has been refined even further.

Microsoft has further announced that they will release Endpoint Privilege Management (which is currently in public preview) and Advanced Endpoint Analytics as a start, but there are more things coming which will make this suite even better!

Why should I consider this?

Should you consider the Microsoft Intune suite? Well, that depends on your needs. For some, it certanly makes sense to consider it given that they are interested in a lot of the listed features. For others, maybe just one is interesting which then makes more sense to buy as add-ons on it’s on rather than buying the whole suite.

I think, as of right now, Remote Help and the upcoming Endpoint Privilege Management is what will be most useful for many companies as it solves two major headaches: A remote support tool integrated to Intune and a first party solution to manage local administrator. There are a lot of other good tools out there to manage both remote support and local administrator but having a first party tool comes with advantages such as good integrations to Intune for e.g. reporting.

I will in feature post dig in more to the features of the Intune Suite, but for now we have set the scene!

Categories
Windows 365

Why would you use a Cloud PC?

I’ve been reading a lot of posts lately about the “why” around Cloud PC, why and when you would use a Cloud PC and what the scenarios could be. This inspired me a bit!

The way we often see virtual computers is that “yeah they are great, but this is way too complex for us” or the more common one “we triend that 5 years ago, we won’t go down that route again”.

My idea for this post is to talk a little bit about why you should move to Windows 365 for the bulk of your users and use AVD for those niche implementations where Windows 365 can’t really fulfill your needs today.

Why would you work from a Cloud PC?

Image that you are like me, a consultant, who collaborates with several different customers who all have their own environment. Or maybe you have taken the decision to support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), which would be a similar scenario for consultants.

When I talk to customers and other people about Windows 365, we often discuss two scenarios:

  • Consultants/part time workers,
  • Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A).

The first one is way more common to be honest since most organisations today have at least some consultants in their team.

If you look at a consultant, they usually work for some kind of company which provides them with a computer which they take with them everywhere they go (I know I do). Since they already have a computer, why give them yet another one to fill their backpack with? Why not use a Cloud PC which they can access from a device of their choice, which you can configure in such a way that information cannot leave the Cloud PC.

Using a Cloud PC, you can give a consultant or employee access to the internal network without them having to install anything on their, by your company, unmanaged device. The device they will work from will be fully managed and you can be sure that you have done everything in your power that you have secured your data.

Working from a Cloud PC isn’t that different from using a physical, since all we do today requires an internet connection anyway. Sure, you get reliant on always having an internet connection (until Windows 365 introduces the offline mode). But let’s face it, we are already reliant on that for collaborating in our daily work, I’m myself never offline unless basically traveling on an airplane.

Environmental impact

There is also another aspect of this, which we might not always talk about, but I find interesting. It’s the fact that getting new computers has a significant impact on the environment, and getting hold of hardware isn’t always that easy nowadays (long lead times).

Using Windows 365 has some environmental benefits compared to physical computers. Firstly, it reduces the amount of energy, water, and resources needed to produce and dispose of physical hardware. Secondly, it optimizes the use of computing resources and reduces energy consumption, which lowers the associated carbon emissions.

However, using virtual desktops needs a reliable internet connection and raises concerns about data privacy and security. Overall, while the environmental impact of using Windows 365 compared to physical computers is complex, cloud-based computing services can reduce the need for physical hardware and use computing resources more efficiently, thus benefiting the environment.

The fact that we can run Cloud PCs on any hardware, this also means that older hardware can be used longer (but be careful using Windows 10 after 14 of October 2025 since it will no longer get patched). There are many ways of making use of older hardware without needing to install Windows on them even. IgelOS is an awesome example of this, and there are many other products like them!

The takeaway

So, what do I think you should take away from this blog post?

Firstly, I think you should seriously consider STOP giving your consultants PCs and have them use Cloud PCs instead. This will save you time and money since you will not have to source computers for them, and it’s not too uncommon that we provide consultants with older hardware which might have reached the end of its lifecycle and might not be too reliant anymore.

There are great examples of this, such as the Swedish manufacturing company Alleima who in a Microsoft customer case describes how they look at this. There is also another Swedish example with the energy company Kraftringen who also went down the same path with using Windows 365 for temporary workers.

Secondly, let’s face it. The consultant already has one computer which they bring wherever they go. Why give them yet another computer they need to fit into their already filled up backpack? And when the assignment is over, you have the hassle of getting that computer back, especially if you have used resources which are not local to your area. Then it needs to be shipped or a visit to the office planned and coordinated.

Using a Cloud PC, you can have a consultant up and running within a few hours, without having to get any kind of hardware to them!

But as always, there are of course instances where a physical machine is required, but I would say that you could solve the consultant situation 80-90% of the time! 😊

Categories
Digital Transformation

Controlling your carbon footprint in Windows

As many probably know, Microsoft released a bigger update to Windows 11 with the March Patch-Tuesday release. This patch was more than just patches, this included also some new features like the Windows 365 app which reached GA earlier this year, video recording in the Snipping tool and some pretty cool AI features from Bing.

But one of the better new features is, according to me, the new energy recommendations to help you decrease your carbon footprint. This new feature is just a set of recommended settings to set for your computer to be more energy efficiant.

The end-user could implement these settings themselves, but let’s face it, no one outside the IT department would look for that in the settings.

Since Windows does not enforce the policies to be changed, someone needs to make an active decision here.

This is what my device looked like when just jumping into the settings. What options you see might vary depending on what device you are using, and you can even get recommendations on a Cloud PC. In this example, I’m using a desktop PC. As you can see I have two settings which are not in line with Microsoft recommendations, and one which is managed by Intune. If I had a laptop, there would have been more options for me such as screen brightness and battery optimization.

Here I can select if I want to apply all or just a subset of actions. If I click on apply all, all settings will be updated to the recommended value.

I can also now see, if I step back in the settings menu, that I have enabled all available settings.

Conclusion

Even if this is a small update, I think it’s a good and important one to adopt. You can of course look into having these defined within your environment, which will mean that users cannot change these settings themself if they would like for some reason.

This is a balance between enforcement and spreading awareness amongst users. There might be reasons for users needing increased brightness on their screen as an example. But looking at this from a sustainability perspective, this is a great place to start working with your computers around this even more.

If you want to know more about the settings which is a part of this, have a look at this Microsoft support page: Learn more about energy recommendations – Microsoft Support

Categories
Windows 365

Running Hyper-V on a Cloud PC

This is the second version of this post, since the original one got lost in a recovery since my blog went down.

One thing that many IT pros tend to use a lot is virtual machines in e.g., Hyper-V, for testing or running different things. That is also one excellent advantage of having a physical computer, that possibility to run multiple virtual machines (VM) locally. However, what if you use a Cloud PC and want to run local VMs?

This has been possible since a while back if you were running the fancier SKUs of Windows 365 (the 8 vCPU one), but that is also combined with a higher cost. You could enable the hypervisor on the Cloud PC and run Hyper-V.

However, since February you can run Hyper-V on one of the “lower” SKUs of Windows 365, the 4 vCPU version. This is a fantastic addition to the value Windows 365 brings, since you don’t have to get the fanciest version, you can stick to a more resonable machine.

Enabling Hyper-V

Enabling Hyper-V on a Cloud PC isn’t much different from a physical client. You need to have local admin privileges on the machine, either through given rights or a secondary account. Then search the start menu for “Turn Windows features on or off” and open the dialogue.

Look for Hyper-V in the list of features, select it and then press OK to close the dialogue.

Once you have done this, you will be asked to restart your machine to enable the new Windows features. So go ahead and restart the machine directly or do it later if you need to save any work you have open.

If you want to learn more about the different ways you can enable Hyper-V, check this Microsoft article out, since there are other ways than clicking through the interface Enable Hyper-V on Windows 10 | Microsoft Learn.

Run Hyper-V on your Cloud PC

Just like with any other computer, once the Hyper-V feature has been enabled and you have restarted your machine, you can now go ahead and start the Hyper-V Manager. One thing to keep in mind is that you need to start Hyper-V in an elevated context, otherwise you will not be able to connect to your local machine as a server.

From here you can create your virtual machines using either your own image or using the quick create feature. So, this is nothing different from running Hyper-V on a physical client!

Conclusion

Having the opportunity to utilize Hyper-V, or other types of local virtual machines, can be a crucial feature for many IT Pros. Looking at how Windows 365 is being adopted at least on the Swedish market, we see a lot of consultants and temporary workers using this as their “customer computer”. Since you could now use Hyper-V on even that computer, this means that you no longer need to rely on having test environments on your local machine, opening the possibility to work from more types of devices while still being able to perform task from a more powerful computer.

For me, working as a consultant and mostly utilizing Cloud PCs when working with my customers, this opens new possibilities to run tests in the customers environment in a much simpler way.

Categories
Intune Windows 365

Can we build a Windows 365 kiosk for shared use?

Once every now and then you get one of those weird and maybe a bad ideas and ask yourself:

“What if I have a Windows 10 computer which cannot run Windows 11, but I really want to run Windows 11 on it in a supported way?“

That was what I asked myself when realizing my old Surface Laptop (first generation) does not support Windows 11.

Putting this in maybe a more real-life like scenario “we have some old hardware and Windows 365. We want to keep using the hardware for a few more years but run Windows 11” or something like that.

This gave me an idea. Can we create a kiosk that runs the Windows 365 app only on a managed Windows 10 computer? And to make it more special, let’s make it as a shared device so that I get MY Cloud PC and you get YOUR Cloud PC! 😊

Since Windows 365 Boot is not coming to Windows 10, we need another solution. This solution could be using kiosk mode and shared mode for Windows.

Pre-reqs

What do we need for this to work?

  • Intune managed Windows 10 computer
  • Computer registered for Windows Autopilot
  • Self-deploying deployment profile for Windows Autopilot
  • Shared device policy
  • Windows 365 license of some sort
  • All other licenses required to use Intune
  • The Remote Desktop application installed on a device
  • An Azure AD group containing out kiosk PCs

And that is about it.

My thought is to use the old school ShellLauncher method for this, not the fancy assigned app setup since we can make this more dynamic if we want to re-purpose this for another application. This means that we could also use Win32 applications and not only UWP apps.

Using the ShellLauncher method in Intune has gotten really easy, it’s just one custom policy and we are set.

Creating the ShellLauncher script

When looking around for a good source, and inspiration, for this setup I came across this post by Michael Niehaus which is really good and even provides a sample script we can use (why re-invent the wheel?).

Using the script example in the blog above, I came up with this script which you can download from my Github repo.

Basically, what you need to update, is the <Shell> section of this part to the path for your application (Win32) or the AUMID (UWP). In this case, the Windows 365 app for Windows 10 which is a UWP app (as stated in the V2:AppType attribute).

If the remote desktop session is closed, the application will restart.

Creating the ShellLauncher policy

For this, we need to create a custom policy in Intune.

First step is to go to Intune (https://endpoint.microsoft.com) and navigate to Devices > Windows > Configuration profiles and select “+ Create profile“. Select Windows 10 and later as platform, Template as profile type and then the Custom template.

Next, we will give our profile a good name so that we know what the profile does. This should be based on your name standard and naming convention for policies. Then hit next at the bottom of the window.

On the “Configuration settings” tab, select “Add” and give the configuration a name (e.g., ShellLauncher V2). As OMA-URI, enter:

./Device/Vendor/MSFT/AssignedAccess/ShellLauncher

As data type, select “String (XML file)” and upload your XML file. When this is completed, press Save at the bottom of the screen.

You will now see that your setting has been added as a row to this configuration setting and you can press Next at the bottom of the screen.

On the Assignment tab, select the group where you have put you targeted kiosk devices and press Next at the bottom of the screen.

You can skip the “Applicability rules” tab and jump straight to the “Review + create” tab to view a summary of your configuration.

Once you have reviewed your settings, you can press Create and your profile will be created.

Shared device policy

The other profile we need to create is a profile for Shared device. This is done by going to Devices > Windows > Configuration profiles and select “+ Create profile“. Select “Windows 10 and later” as platform, “Templates” as Profile type and find and select “Shared multi-user device” and click create.

Give your profile a name, I will call mine “Win365 Shared Kiosk“. When you have given your profile a name, press next.

On the Configuration settings tab, enable the Shared PC mode and add the settings you need based on your requirements. I will use Domain as Guest account type to ensure that only users from my organization will be allowed to sign in. I will also add some additional settings as you can see from the screen. When you have added your settings, hit next.

Assign your policy to the group you created and used for the ShellLauncher policy and press next.

On the last step, review your settings and click create!

Self-deploying enrollment profile

To have this as a zero-touch installation, which would require zero input from an IT person, we can use the self-deploying deployment profile in Windows Autopilot, which means that we need to create a new profile.

In Intune, head to Devices > Windows > Windows Enrollment > Deployment profiles and select “+ Create profile” and select Windows PC.

First step is as always to give you profile a name, I will call mine “Self deployed Kiosk” and then press next.

On the next tab, select “Self-Deploying (preview)” as Deployment mode. You will then see that almost all fields are grayed out. You can leave all values as default, or choose to change the Language, if keyboard should be automatically configured and if a name template should be used.

Notice: If you are to use this on a virtual machine, you will need to use the user-driver deployment mode since self-deploying requires physical hardware.

For this demo, I will leave everything set to default and press next.

The next step is to set assignments, we will select the Azure AD group we created for the policy for this, but you could also use another group. The important part is that the device is in this group.

Press next and you will end up on the review + create tab where you can review your settings before pressing create.

Once the profile is created, it will take around 15 minutes or so for the enrollment profile to be applied to your device, given that it’s not already included in another active assignment. If that is the case, you need to either add an exclusion group or remove it from the other group before the profile will be assigned.

If you navigate to Devices > Windows > Windows Enrollment > Devices you can look at your device and make sure the correct enrollment profile is assigned.

Deploying our kiosk

This is where the fun begins. Let’s deploy our kiosk to our device!

My device needed to be reset, since it’s already managed by Intune, I can simply just use the wipe command and the device will reset. Since I’ve already added it to the target group for my deployment profile, the enrollment will kick off automatically once the device has been reset. However, if you are connecting using Wi-Fi, you will need to select region, keyboard and Wi-Fi network.

Once the Windows Autopilot enrollment process has completed, my Windows 365 kiosk device is ready, and I can now only run the Windows 365 app on my device.

NOTICE!

There is a big flaw in this design at the moment, and that is the fact that we cannot deploy the W365 application during the ESP at this stage, this means that we need to ensure that the application is installed BEFORE we apply the kiosk profile. If and when we can install the application from the “new store” during ESP, this will not be an issue.

This means that we currently need to wait until the W365 app has been deployed before we assign our kiosk profile.

Additional reading:

Awesome post by a fellow W365 MVP Dominiek: Windows 11 Kiosk With The Windows 365 App – techlab.blog

Post by Michael Niehaus how to create a kiosk using ShellLauncher: Creating a kiosk or digital sign using Windows Autopilot, Intune, and Edge (Chromium) – Out of Office Hours (oofhours.com)