What’s new in Microsoft Intune: April 2024

You don’t need me to tell you that automation and AI are hot topics. However, the key to getting the most out of these technologies is cloud-native management. We’re leading the way with Intune, consolidating tools for unified endpoint management and improving productivity and security for enterprise IT admins and end users. This month, we’re happy to announce new capabilities for more efficient device management.

More secure and more productive with app supersedence

Keeping applications up to date has two crucial benefits:

1. Security: Unpatched software can leave organizations exposed to known vulnerabilities.
2. Productivity: New features and capabilities afford new ways to get work done.

With the arrival of updated app supersedence, it’s now easier for IT admins to keep Win32 apps up to date. IT admins can now add an app to Intune and define a supersedence relationship with an existing app, updating to a newer version and setting the availability to auto-update.

From a productivity standpoint, this capability also eliminates the need for users to keep track of app updates or manually update applications themselves.

For more information, see our Add Win32 app supersedence documentation.

More productive troubleshooting with Microsoft 365 app remote diagnostics

When users have issues with applications, support professionals often need to look at application diagnostics. These logs are usually accessible only after navigating several layers of menus, and most end users need real-time assistance to find and send those diagnostics to the support technician. With a new remote diagnostics feature, Intune streamlines the process for getting diagnostics from Microsoft 365 apps running on iOS and Android devices.

To enable this capability, navigate to Device diagnostics > Tenant Admin.

Then, an admin sends a Collect Diagnostics command from the Troubleshoot pane.

Rather than directing users on how to retrieve a log file, a message is sent from Intune to the end user with the diagnostic request.

Once the end user grants permission from their device, admins can access diagnostics and re-request them without additional interruption to the user for seven days.

When an admin looks up the user from the Troubleshoot pane, the Diagnostics tab will show the logs requested and ones that are available for download.

For an in-depth breakdown of this capability, read Enhancing admin capabilities with Microsoft Intune’s remote Microsoft 365 application diagnostics.

Windows update distribution report

IT pros need to have visibility into the status of monthly quality updates on their managed Windows devices as a matter of security and productivity.

Now, a new Windows update distribution report within Intune provides easy-to-read information on what quality updates are running on which devices. To access the new report, navigate to Reports, select Windows updates, and select Windows Update Distribution Report.

The report can show all device information or can be limited to specific device tags in the scope field. It includes co-managed devices and displays update distribution as a percentage of the total device population.

Users can get granular per feature version details, selecting an individual update. They can even access reports on the devices that need updating but haven’t yet applied it.

From this view, device counts can be selected. This will open the report to show the devices in that count and some additional device information, which can be used for troubleshooting or exporting for analysis.

For more information, see the documentation, Windows update distribution report for Intune.

Upcoming Improvements:

In the next service release, we’re planning on the following improvements:

1. Scope tags dropdown will have a select all and deselect all option.
2. Additional filters on managed by and last check-in columns.

With these new tools at hand, we hope you’ll find some new efficiencies. Tell us about how these capabilities have helped you or what you hope to see next by sending us a message on X @MSIntune or on LinkedIn.

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