From an employee experience perspective, Intune has made some major strides with new features in 2023. Some of the features are now available while others will be rolling out throughout the year. In addition to the new Intune security features, the employee experience updates continue to make Intune an industry-leading device management tool.
In the content below, we explore the new improved employee experience features of Intune, and also dive into how they can be leveraged by IT teams looking to improve their device management programs.
Advanced Endpoint Analytics
In the past, many IT struggled to gain endpoint visibility outside of collecting intel from support tickets. And over the years, many teams have attempted to develop custom scripts for proactive remediation to resolve issues prior to their occurrence. However, it has been a real challenge to identify device issues before they occur.
Advanced Endpoint Analytics aims to proactively identify device issues. It does so by taking all telemetry data that Microsoft collects from Intune-managed endpoints, applying machine learning and AI to the data set, then surfacing potential issues to IT teams that should be investigated. It also shows the correlation between potential causes and an aggregation of the impacted devices.
One of the most impressive components of the new Advanced Endpoint Analytics feature focuses on is application reliability. This feature gives IT professionals insight into applications that have crashed, the frequency at which crashes occur, and correlating activity. For instance, admins can dive into any device and audit performance with an advanced timeline of incidents. Advanced Endpoint Analytics gives teams the ability to derive data on incident rates along with the capacity to spot anomalies. This allows issues that affect end-user experience to be clearly surfaced to IT teams for remediation, instead of waiting for support tickets.
Ultimately, Advanced Endpoint Analytics enables IT teams to be proactive with application reliability rather than reactive to support tickets. The overarching goal is not only to present incidents and end-user anomalies but also to provide Intune admins with suggestions for fixes.
Remote Help
Intune has released version two of the Remote Help feature that brings some exciting new capabilities.
Firstly, Remote Help is now included as a part of the Intune suite (Woo!). The feature is designed to enable IT teams to support devices regardless of location. This truly benefits remote and hybrid teams. It is a fully cloud-based solution that is integrated into Intune.
In the upcoming months of 2023, admins can expect to see integrated chat with Intune’s remote help – eliminating the necessity to use a separate chat tool when an end-user is receiving device support. There will be additional conditional access policies to ensure the approval of remote access to devices is streamlined.
Additionally, unattended remote support is on the roadmap for Intune. This allows remediation to take place without a user present. This feature is especially useful for kiosk machines and shared devices that require maintenance between end users.
Remote help for Android devices will soon be available. Admins will be able to deep dive into these devices thanks to the APIs exposed by Android, making them more manageable in an enterprise setting.
Tunnel for BYO Devices (MAM Tunnel)
One of the most exciting features that the Intune team has dropped in 2023 is the tunnel for BYO devices known as the MAM tunnel (mobile application management tunnel). The MAM tunnel ensures apps containing sensitive information have an authentication tool, data encryption as well as governance on how data enters and leaves the app. Fundamentally, this enables BYO devices to connect securely to on-premises resources, without enrolling the devices, creating a greater user experience.
The MAM tunnel allows for a ‘per app’ VPN capability, configured in Intune. This permits admins to configure their own MAM policy and configure a tunnel policy for specific custom apps while providing a secure authentication process to stand up a micro-VPN back to the on-premises platform. When properly configured, end-users will be unable to copy data out of the configured apps allowing for an extra layer of data security.
Conclusion
The new Intune updates are sure to improve how we approach endpoint management in years to come. The future is bright with Intune, and it will be exciting to see what they roll out next!
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