What is Windows Intune?

In Windows Intune, the System Overview workspace provides a starting point for assessing the overall health of computers across your organization, identifying issues, and performing basic management tasks such as creating computer groups and viewing reports.

Alerts in the Notice Board area provide information about key management tasks and links to configuration settings and other areas in the console so that you can complete tasks such as configuring automatic approvals for updates and downloading the Windows Intune client software. Status summaries in the System Status area for Endpoint Protection, Updates, and Agent Health let you quickly identify and prioritize issues that need your immediate attention. A list of all active alerts grouped by type and sorted by severity in the Alerts by Type area provides an additional tool for assessing the health of computers in your organization, and proactively addressing issues. In the Learn About area on the right side of the Overview page, you can access a link to Windows Intune newsgroups where you can post questions and share information with other members of the Windows Intune community.

You can use the Computers workspace to create and manage computer groups, for ease and flexibility of management. You can organize groups in the way that best suits your organizational needs (for example, by geographic location, department, or hardware characteristics) and move computers between groups. To enhance organizational flexibility, with Windows Intune, a computer can belong to more than one group.

The Computers Overview page provides status summaries for Alerts, Updates, and Endpoint Protection so that you can quickly assess the health of computers in your organization. Status summaries flag potential or current problems to help you prioritize your time and take appropriate action. Windows Intune provides a hierarchical view of computer groups to let you view status summaries for a specific computer group, and then identify and resolve problems on direct members of the group.

You can use the Updates workspace to administer the software update process efficiently for all the managed computers in your organization. The Windows Intune administrator console supports and encourages best practices for update management and lets you focus on your environment and the tasks that you have to perform.

When a managed computer in your organization requests a new software update that is published through Microsoft Update, an update notification is displayed in the Windows Intune administrator console. Each update contains a set of applicability rules. Whether an update is applicable is determined by the hardware and software that is installed on the managed computer. For example, a computer that is running Windows Vista® will not evaluate a Windows XP update. Based on the results of this evaluation, you can decide whether to approve the update.

As updates are approved and installed on managed computers, the update status changes to reflect the success or failure of the installation. Learning how to view and interpret the status of an update enables you to manage updates easily across your organization.

Windows Intune Endpoint Protection helps enhance the security of managed computers in your organization by providing real-time protection against potential threats, keeping malicious software definitions up-to-date, and automatically running scans. The Windows Intune administrator console provides Endpoint Protection status summaries so that if malicious software is detected on a managed computer, or if a computer is not protected, you can quickly identify the affected computer and take appropriate action. Links from the console to relevant Microsoft Malware Protection Center topics let you learn more about malicious software that may be affecting computers in your organization.

You can use the Alerts workspace to quickly assess the overall health of managed computers in your organization. Alerts let you identify potential or current problems and take action accordingly to prevent or minimize negative effects on business operations. For example, you can view all recent alerts to obtain a broad picture of computer health. Or you might want to investigate specific issues that are occurring on members of specific computer groups or for specific workspaces, such as Endpoint Protection. By using filters, you can view all alerts of a specific severity level, and you can display alerts that are active or alerts that are closed.

To make sure that the appropriate people are notified about alerts, you can configure rules to have Windows Intune send email notifications about new alerts of a certain severity level, all alerts, or remote assistance alerts to recipients that you specify.

The Software workspace lists programs that are installed on all client computers that you are managing by using Windows Intune and lets you sort the inventory by software publisher, name, installation count, or category. Each unique software title has its own entry in the list. You can also search for specific software.

The Licenses workspace lets you upload Microsoft Software License Terms information to Microsoft Volume License Services (MVLS) and lets you determine the license entitlement that corresponds to a set of Microsoft Volume License agreements.

You can enter license agreements into Windows Intune by providing one or more pairs of numbers for each agreement: the authorization or agreement number, and the license or enrollment number. These numbers are supplied by MVLS when licenses are purchased, upgraded, or renewed.

After license agreements are entered into Windows Intune, clicking Refresh Now retrieves the entitlement information from MVLS and compares the license information to your discovered Microsoft software. You can then create license reports that show installation counts and license counts for Microsoft software titles. After you generate license reports, you can export them to add license information from other purchase channels, such as OEM and Retail.

Note
These reports are for your use only; Microsoft cannot view your license reports. For more information, see the Microsoft privacy policy.

Features of the Licenses workspace do not affect your license agreements or entitlements to use your software. No actions that you perform in Windows Intune can change the properties and terms of your license agreements with Microsoft. For example, deleting a license agreement pair in Windows Intune does not affect license agreements that exist between you and Microsoft.

You can use the Policy workspace to configure Windows Intune policies that manage settings for Updates, Endpoint Protection, Windows Firewall, and Windows Intune Center on computers. You can create policies based on templates, configure policy settings, and then deploy policies to groups of computers. The policy templates include setting descriptions and recommended values. Additionally, you can search for policies by name or description.

Although other workspaces in the Windows Intune administrator console also provide search and filtering functionality, you can use the Reports workspace to obtain more detailed reports and print or export the information. The Reports workspace provides reports for updates, software, and licensing. For example, the License Reconciliation report provides a detailed list of software compared to your licenses.

The Administration workspace lets you download the most current version of the client software, view details about your Windows Intune account (such as account name, status, and active seat count), and add administrators to your account. You can also use tools in the Administration workspace to configure the kind of updates that you want to deploy to managed computers in your organization, and to send email notifications to other people in your organization when specific alerts are generated. Additionally, you can enable or disable alerts of a specific type so that you can focus on the most important alerts in your environment.