Managing Windows 10 updates for a remote work world
During a global public health crisis in which working remotely has become the new normal, managing the Windows 10 operating system helps ensure remote users stay safe, secure, and productive. One of the most important issues is how best to configure a management approach for Windows 10 updates that will protect endpoints without adversely impacting device performance or user productivity. Here, we will focus on options for delivering feature and quality updates to remote worker endpoints, how to configure those endpoints to receive updates you designate as important, and how to maintain a desired level of control—all while minimizing infrastructure impact. Update types To help ensure device compliance and user productivity, Microsoft sends different types of updates including: Quality updates. These monthly updates include bug fixes and security enhancements. Because quality updates are cumulative and don’t require a complete reinstallation, the packages are smaller, and they download and install quickly. Feature updates. These twice-yearly updates include new features and significant enhancements to the Windows operating system. Feature updates are essentially a new version of Windows 10, and as such they require a complete reinstallation. While they are larger in size than quality updates, the only files downloaded are those necessary to complete the update, so staying current with updates has advantages. Device driver updates. These small pieces of software are the updates made to the device drivers by original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendors. Microsoft Update is used as a channel for distributing these updates. Microsoft Defender definition updates. These updates include current threat information for Microsoft Defender. To support remote worker scenarios, we recommend that remote endpoints obtain approved updates via the internet. In such cases, split-tunnel VPN can help reduce traffic. For delivery of Windows 10 updates, there are three primary mechanisms to consider: Windows Update, Windows Update for Business, and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. Each mechanism has different benefits and limitations that you will need to assess to make the best selection for your specific scenarios. We will look at each of these mechanisms in more detail, but the basic comparison in the table below provides our starting point. Update mechanism IT pro control Update delivery Windows Update Low Internet Windows Update for Business Medium Internet Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager High On premises/Internet Windows Update Windows Update is a Microsoft service for Windows operating systems that automates the download and installation of updates over the internet. Windows Update provides update files for the Windows operating system, device drivers, and other products such as Microsoft Defender. While Windows Update is primarily used for feature and quality updates for consumer devices, given its effectiveness and global scale, many enterprise customers use Windows Update as the update mechanism for their devices. For the remote worker scenario, it’s the most cost effective. However, it provides the least management control for IT pros. To allow end users to update the endpoint using Windows Update policy through the Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Update pathway, select either Not Configured (default setting) or Disabled under “Do not connect to any Windows Update Internet locations.” cy configuration options for "Do not connect to any Windows Update internet locations” Quality updates There are several control options in Windows Update for quality updates. Options on the Windows Update agent include checking for quality updates, pausing them, setting active hours, viewing update history, and advanced options, as shown below. After selecting Check for updates, the status of update downloads and installation is shown on the Windows Update agent. When you select Pause updates, update installation is paused for seven days by default. It is also possible to change the timeframe for the pause by selecting Advanced options and entering the necessary information. To avoid possible disruption caused by updates, you can set active hours for devices. Windows can also determine active hours automatically based on activity. Under Advanced options, there are additional settings related to update delivery. Along with pause timing mentioned above, advanced options include preferences for receiving updates for other Microsoft products, using metered connections such as 3G or LTE for downloading updates, and defining restart actions and notifications to complete updates. Feature updates Windows Update provides limited control over twice-yearly feature updates. Each endpoint should be configured to be in the Semi-Annual Channel by the end user. However, for Windows Update to be the active mechanism for updates, there should not be a policy or configuration in place for deferral branch, days, or pausing updates. If these policies are configured, devices are considered to be using Windows Update for Business, which we will discuss more in the next section. Update deferral can be configured from Advanced options by designating the number of days a feature update is deferred, as shown below. Windows Update for Business Windows Update for Business is the same Windows Update service described above but with one key differentiator: devices are managed and configured through centralized policies. This gives the IT pro more granular management capabilities, including deferral of feature updates for up to 365 days. Based on direct customer feedback, Microsoft continues to invest in new capabilities and features to make Windows Update for Business an enterprise friendly solution from a granular management perspective. Windows Update for Business can be configured using several different options. Among them are Active Directory Group Policy Objects, Microsoft Intune, and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. Group Policy Objects IT pros can manage Windows Update for Business using Group Policy Objects in Active Directory. Windows Update for Business policy objects are found through the Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update\Windows Update for Business pathway. Different policies are used to defer quality updates and feature updates. The “Select when Preview Builds and Feature Updates are received” policy defines the update channel and deferral period for preview builds and feature updates, as shown below. Similarly, the “Select when Quality Updates are received” policy is used to determine options for when quality updates will be received. Windows Insider Program for Business Companies can also manage joining Windows Insider Program through the “Manage preview builds” policy. Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager Configuration Manager is another option for creating and deploying Windows Update for Business policies. Under Software Library\Overview, you’ll find the Windows 10 Servicing node, where servicing plans and updates for Windows 10 can be managed. The Windows Update for Business Policies console is also located in this node. You can create new Windows Update for Business policies by using the task in the ribbon or via the Software Library tree by locating Windows Update for Business Policies and right-clicking to select “Create Windows Update for Business Policy Wizard.” In the wizard, your first step is to specify a name and description for the policy. You can then set deferral policies for feature updates and quality updates. You can also opt to install updates for other Microsoft products and whether to include drivers with Windows Update. After you create policies for Windows Update for Business, they can be deployed to the collections within the Configuration Manager environment just like any other policy. While deploying the update, the endpoint will be configured during maintenance windows unless you select “Allow remediation outside the maintenance window” in the Deploy Windows Update for Business Policy wizard. The deployed policy is listed in the Configurations tab of the Configuration Manager client agent. The device will be evaluated and remediated according to the deployment configuration for the policy. Microsoft Intune Windows Update for Business also can be managed through Microsoft Intune without any on-premises infrastructure components. Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service that focuses on mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM). Intune integrates with Microsoft Azure Active Directory, and it can be used as a stand-alone cloud service or for co-management with Configuration Manager. You can configure updates and create Windows 10 update deployment rings through the Software updates node in the Microsoft Intune dashboard. In Intune, creating update rings is a four-step process. In Step 1: Basics, you will name the ring and provide a description. After naming the ring, you will move to Step 2: Update ring settings, where you will configure the servicing channel, whether to include updates for other products and drivers, and, importantly, deferral settings for quality and feature updates. You can also manage the user experience by defining active hours, restart checks, the ability to pause updates, and automatic update behavior settings. After the update ring settings are configured, you will move to Step 3: Assignments, where you assign the ring to a group of devices. In Step 4, you will review and apply the update ring settings you have created. When users review Windows Update settings from a managed device, they will see clear indication that some settings are managed by the organization. Users can also view policies for optional and required updates. When users select View configured update policies from the Windows Update settings screen, they can review details for the update policies that are applied to the mobile device. As shown in the list above, some of the many policies administrators can define for Windows Update for Business include “Branch readiness level,” “Quality update deferral period,” and “Feature update deferral period.” Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager provides the greatest control and flexibility over servicing Windows. Administrators can approve which updates are distributed, which set of devices they should be distributed to, and when these updates should be deployed. It is possible to extend the Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager environment to support remote worker scenarios using granular controls through cloud services such as Cloud Attached Management and Co-Management. Let’s dig deeper into the different options and components for Configuration Manager and cloud services management scenarios. Cloud management gateway and cloud distribution points. The cloud management gateway (CMG) and cloud distribution points (CDPs) extend Configuration Manager capabilities for internet-based devices. To learn more, see Plan for the cloud management gateway in Configuration Manager. When managing remote machines, it is important to configure a split-tunnel VPN and Configuration Manager. For more information, see Managing remote machines with cloud management gateway in Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. A CMG can be managed through the Administration\Overview\Cloud Services path in the Configuration Manager dashboard. You will find the list of content files for internet-based distribution points and endpoints in Properties, under the Content tab. A CMG is listed as a regular distribution point (DP) in the Configuration Manager hierarchy. IT pros can use a CMG and CDPs to deploy apps and other content to remote endpoints just as you would to deploy content for on-premises clients using on-premises DPs. Although a CMG does not block copying of update content, deployment of updates through a CMG is not recommended. Instead, internet-based clients get their updates from Microsoft Update cloud service as documented here. A CMG and CDPs can also be used to execute task sequences in remote endpoints. Content is distributed to CDPs and task sequences are deployed to a collection of remote devices just as they are for on-premises managed clients. Co-management When co-management is enabled in Configuration Manager, you can manage workloads for an endpoint by configuring different authorities. Co-management is located through the Administration\Overview\Cloud Services pathway in Configuration Manager. You will designate policies and configurations settings in the Workload tab for co-management properties. For example, in the screenshot below you can see that Windows Update policies are managed by Configuration Manager, so IT needs to review, approve, and distribute the updates to the distribution points in the Endpoint Manager hierarchy. IT can shift management of these policies to Intune by using the slider. Summary During these extraordinary times in which many organizations have embraced digital transformation in order position themselves with modern and cloud management, Microsoft is dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes succeed. The global pandemic has forced many organizations to embrace new solutions and endpoint management approaches in order to keep remote workers safe, secure, and productive while maintaining compliance with company policies. Microsoft will continue to evolve endpoint management solutions to address challenges IT pros experience, simplify processes, and ensure success. Additional resources For more details on how Windows Update works with different types of updates, see Get started with Windows Update. For more information on split-tunnel VPN, see how to quickly optimize Office 365 traffic for remote staff & reduce the load on your infrastructure. You can check your network configuration using the Office 365 Network Onboarding tool to validate split tunnel configuration. To learn more about Windows Update for Business, visit What is Windows Update for Business? For more about optimizing Windows Update, see Optimize Windows monthly update deployment for remote devices. For more information on deploying Windows 10 remotely, see Deploying a new version of Windows 10 in a remote world. For more on managing quality updates and Patch Tuesday, visit Managing Patch Tuesday with Configuration Manager in a remote work world.
Looking for a board management software for remote teams
Hello all, As you know majority of us are working remote now. I work in a private firm here in Jacksonville,ever since we started remote working, managing the board meetings, like organizing them, bringing all the members to the meeting, managing the documents and everything else has become quiet a task for us. So our company is thinking about investing in a board management software. We are currently in the process of prospecting a couple of solution. We are already using SharePoint services, so we have our eyes set on a SharePoint based board management software, obviously because we the painful moving process to new solution can be avoided. I've also looked into testimonials and reviews for the solution and honestly we are still to make a formal decision. Anyway i was thinking with the experience you guys have on these matters, maybe you could advise us in the right direction. It would be a great help to get responses from you guys. Looking forward to hear form you all. oh and thanks in advance.Agility with Microsoft 365: How I Worked Remotely During the Coronavirus Outbreak
Hello! I’m Violet Zhang, a senior marketing specialist based in the https://www.avepoint.com/ Changchun office in China. My responsibilities include marketing data analysis, digital marketing asset production, and regional marketing support. Due to the https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen following the Spring Festival, we have been temporarily forced to work from home in an effort to avoid the risk of contracting and spreading the virus throughout our community. For organizations considering similar containment measures, I wanted to assure everyone that working from home can be “business as usual” based on my experience. With the right technology and process support structures in place (which I will detail below), my colleagues and I have been able to stay safe and healthy without our daily operations missing a beat. Office 365 Is Essential to Working From Home Productively Our local offices rapidly responded to the outbreak by organizing a work from home schedule for our colleagues in the region. Our general managers and directors are closely monitoring the status of the coronavirus and have extended the time we’re to work from home to ensure everybody is safe and comfortable. At the same time, our IT team has established our modern workplace technology infrastructure and necessary devices (e.g. mobile devices and laptops equipped with the full Office 365 suite) for all employees to work and collaborate as effectively as possible when operating remotely. A few years ago, prior to https://www.avepoint.com/blog/solutions-blog/the-evolution-of-software-a-journey-to-saas/, our existing infrastructure would not have been able to scale and handle all of my colleagues working from home and connecting to company networks via VPN. Today, we’re leveraging Microsoft Teams to work collaboratively and seamlessly with our global colleagues, customers, and partners. It’s not overstating things to say that Office 365 and Microsoft Teams have been essential to maintaining business continuity during the outbreak. How I Stay Productive Working from Home with Microsoft 365 As a marketer working with a global team, it’s important for me to be aware of the latest developments in our company and the most up-to-date information on the marketing strategies we’re employing. Office 365 gives me the opportunity to spend time working with colleagues from other offices on a variety of cross-functional daily tasks. A Typical Day Every morning I’ve spent working from home has started by catching up with marketing-related conversations via our Marketing team’s channel in Microsoft Teams. Next, I’ll join online meetings with our global design or web tech teams to discuss new ideas or existing issues with projects we’re working on. Any feedback from those teams will be shared with the APAC team through a Microsoft Teams meeting to make sure the regional Marketing team is on the same page. Once we get the final solution approved by our corporate Marketing team, all regions will execute requests through the SharePoint task list embedded as https://www.avepoint.com/blog/microsoft-teams/microsoft-teams-tabs/ accordingly. Empower & Trust Your Employees To give us the flexibility we need, AvePoint decided that those working from home due to COVID-19 can work whenever we want as long as it’s for eight hours per day. Our team leads handle this by setting daily goals and trusting their team members to complete the tasks that they’re assigned. However, there are many factors that might affect results when working from home. Interacting with family, the lack of a formal atmosphere, and household distractions all need to be considered when trying to manage homebound employees. In this regard, OneNote has been crucial for us during our time away from the office. The Marketing Team has been using it to keep track of daily tasks so managers can easily view their overall status and submit helpful comments. Better yet, all the operations via OneNote can be marked as author names, making it especially easy for the team to keep track of things. Utilizing the right tools is helping us accomplish twice as much with half the effort. By being able to keep track of everyone’s task status, team leads can more easily assist everyone regardless if they’re in the same room or not. Observing how long certain tasks take also enables leads to offer relevant advice and note areas for improvement and areas where employees excel. Stay Updated, Wherever You Are AvePoint is a global organization with around 1,600 employees. With in-person training opportunities cut short by the coronavirus epidemic, educating new AvePoint employees in affected regions can be challenging. Thankfully, https://www.avepoint.com/blog/office-365/yammer-communities-avepoint/ keeps information dissemination consistent and easy to follow for everyone. Our colleagues from around the world can post various training documents, webinars, live stream quarterly town halls, and we can all absorb that information from the comfort of our homes. Not only can we see the news from company executives like https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetdux/, but we can also learn from (and easily interact with) subject matter experts at any level of the company through this one interface. For example, the local marketing team recently got together for our quarterly all-hands meeting to go over the latest product updates, sales promotions, team news, and highlights and lowlights of the past few months. We usually all gather in our regional offices for these, but this time everyone got together online for one of the best all-hands meetings we’ve had in a long time. Video conferencing via Microsoft Teams made it easy to communicate comfortably with everyone, and we took advantage of the blurring functionality in Teams to keep our homes private and stay focused on the speaker. After the meeting, feedback was collected through a Microsoft Form, eliminating the need to manually collect from and talk to every single participant. In terms of global collaboration, the lead management team in Marketing has a routine bi-weekly global meeting where we report various campaign performance stats to the international corporate team. Due to the time difference, it’s held at 10:30pm CST (China Standard Time) every Wednesday night. Thankfully, Outlook always reminds me by popping a reminder 15 min. beforehand. All it takes is a single click of the hyperlink in the email to be taken directly to the meeting in Microsoft Teams. Attendees prepared ahead by summarizing all the campaign types and stats they wanted to discuss in the meeting OneNote. This made it easy to quickly go through the performance of each campaign with our international colleagues; executives were even able to quickly comment highlights and lowlights in the notes for future reference. When we originally started having these calls, the first few minutes were always dedicated to updating our overseas colleagues with the COVID-19 situation in China. It was a small way to keep each other in the know, but it still made me glad to be able to share information and receive advice so easily with today’s technology. Our VP of Marketing, https://www.linkedin.com/in/liujulie, still goes out of her way to take that time and confirm that there aren’t any cases among the Chinese employees. She said it best when she expressed how glad she is that everyone can work remotely and keep the team’s productivity going strong. How It Feels to Work From Home After a Month While it feels good to stay productive and contribute from home, there are certainly challenges. February is the shortest month of the year, but working remotely for its entirety made it feel like the longest by far. Most of my colleagues would honestly love to go back to their offices and collaborate in person instead of online. We’re used to an open work area, wide computer screens, comfortable desks and chairs, and being surrounded by great workmates. We genuinely miss seeing each other! In the meantime, though, it’s been amazing seeing just how well everyone has been able to adapt in a time of such crisis. Parents and grandparents have used the time to babysit and do tasks around the house while working, while others have used the flexible work hours to join online classes to improve their professional skills. Some have taken the time to sharpen language skills, and others have leveraged the time to improve their health by learning new recipes and exercising regularly. We might have lost face-to-face communication, but we’ve gained the silver lining of more time to focus on self-improvement. No pain, no gain, right? Facing This Challenge Head-On As Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang told investors on a recent earnings call, “The crisis is a very, very big challenge for our society, [but it also gives people a] chance to try a new way of living and new way of work.” This couldn’t be more true. COVID 19 gave us a challenge to overcome, and we’ve succeeded by using Microsoft 365 to maintain efficiency and productivity. Though we’ve had to cancel many in-person events, we were able to turn that around by generating more webinars, virtual labs, and boosting our overall number of leads by focusing on the digital space more than ever. The COVID 19 also gave us time to stay with family and remember how much life should be treasured. As my Japanese colleague Aya Ogawa said on Teams one day, “If we could’ve predicted the disease, then we would’ve known how to prepare for, treat, and fight it. It’s nothing to be panicked and over-concerned about.” In the end, it’s our world, our history, and our society no matter what challenges may step in our way. The longest winter will finally end, and can spring be far behind? We will just stay calm and carry on! I hope everyone their and families stay healthy and safe! ---------------- *For the most up-to-date information on COVID-19, follow the https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html and the https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen.How I Manage and Plan Tasks as a Remote Worker 🤓✔📅
I know being a remote worker and working from home can be a challenge, especially when it comes to managing and planning your tasks and to-dos. Since I started at Microsoft, I became a remote worker working from my home office, and I needed to figure out what the best way for me is to get things done. In this blog, I want to share my experience on how to manage and plan tasks as a remote worker working from home and be more productive. Check out my blog here: https://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2020/04/how-i-manage-and-plan-tasks-as-a-remote-worker/
