The MTC might be the coolest thing Microsoft has ever done

I've had the pleasure of going to the MTC located in Atlanta and Boston over the last couple of months. It is easy to explain the technical advantages of having an MTC trip to most people who work in tech. A lot of people don't understand the power of bringing leadership to a place like this. I am in the process of bringing my senior leadership to the MTC to show off the Microsoft road map. Leadership I find cares deeply about road maps when it comes to our stack, which is understandable. Who wants to buy technology that could go end of life in a few years? The MTC is fantastic at letting us get information that traditionally would only be available from product managers. The buildings are beautiful, they are locally themed and all over the country. Ask your Microsoft rep about them and get involved!!

Intune GitHub

I've been doing more and more work lately with Intune and Powershell.  I have to tell you I am very happy with the current state of the Graph API and the MS GitHub repository.  I am getting a bunch of great stuff out of it.  So easy to use, and some great examples.

If you haven't worked on it yet, you should check it out.

https://github.com/microsoftgraph/powershell-intune-samples

Guest Access

Recently had to do a bunch of research into guest access in Azure AD. One of things I've been trying to wrap my head around recently is the move from federation access via legacy ADFS type connections. Moving those over to guest access to B2B. It really fixes some of the trust issues that would happen. It also allows the IAM part of the business to play catch up instead of trusting all domain users for example. I was at ignite this year, and it seemed to be the overall theme. Consuming content how you want to consume, via a B2B, and collaborate on the go. With all the updates to teams we've gotten in the last year, I am excited to see what this year has in store.

Ignite 2018 review

So Ignite has come and gone, and this would of been my 4th Microsoft conference.  The overwhelming theme this was was collaboration.  You would be hard pressed to find anything that doesn't tie back into collaboration.

Microsoft it seems really only cares about two productions, and if you don't tie into those two, you are getting little to no time.

Azure and Office365. They are linking everything in the entire stack back to those two products.  The have also even organized all the vendors by how they connect into those platforms.

I really enjoyed the sessions I attended these year, the sessions around the testing of the new AZ exams was incredibility insightful.  I tend to agree with Microsoft, make the certification path more job role based vs. overall Microsoft skill.

All I want for for my birthday is....

Microsoft certifications that stop changing names.  Here is a rough timeline of how being a professional with Microsoft has been

MCSA

MCSE

MCITP

MCSE

MCSA

Azure Architect

The names have changed back and forth so many times, and I just read yesterday that the names of them are being changed to more job specific titles. Please don't change your mind again next year. Although I have to admit I do like the newer testing format.

Assigning licenses in O365 via Okta

Recently had to set up Okta assign some O365 licenses. I wasn't aware at that time, that this also requires me to manage all the Azure AD roles thru Okta as well. This is a pain in the ass.

PowerShell for Intune Corp device enrollment

There are a bunch of new corporate device examples in the PowerShell github for Intune

Guy should get an award for updating this, its pretty much exactly what I've been looking for

https://github.com/microsoftgraph/powershell-intune-samples/blob/master/CorporateDeviceEnrollment/CorpDeviceEnrollment_Export.ps1


$FileName_CSV = "CorpDeviceIdentifiers" + "_" + $(get-date -f dd-MM-yyyy-H-mm-ss) + ".csv"

$CDI = Get-CorporateDeviceIdentifiers

    if($CDI){

        foreach($CD in $CDI){

        $IDI = $CD.importedDeviceIdentifier
        $Desc = $CD.description

        Write-Host "Adding '$IDI,$Desc' to '$FileName_CSV'..." -ForegroundColor Gray

        Add-Content -Value "$IDI,$Desc" -Path "$ExportPath\$FileName_CSV"

        }

    }

    else {

    Write-Host "No Corporate Device Identifiers found..." -ForegroundColor Red

    }

Write-Host