I had earlier written a blog how managing Windows 10 devices with OMA-URIs can be challenging, but with the introduction of the Windows 10 Settings Catalog profile (Preview), the challenge is mitigated!
The Windows 10 Settings Catalog is a new option to start from scratch and select settings from the library of available Windows 10 settings. Microsoft has done an amazing job to bring all the settings together from existing configuration profiles, converting most of the OMA-URIs, and provide a seamless configuration experience for Intune administrators.
The existing way of creating policies using Profile types will continue to exist, Microsoft now calls them “Templates”
When you create the policy, you start from scratch. You add only the settings you want to control and manage. For example, you can use the settings catalog to create a BitLocker policy with all BitLocker settings, and all in one place in Intune. It is expected that ADMX ingested settings for OneDrive, Office, etc., can make its way into the Settings Catalog very soon.
Let`s have a look at how this new Settings Catalog profile can be configured.
Sign-in to the Endpoint Manager admin center
Browse to Devices – Windows – Configuration profiles
Click Create Profile
Choose Windows 10 and later as Platform
Choose Settings Catalog as Profile
Click Create
Give the profile a Name
Enter a Description (Optional)
Click Next
On the Configuration Settings tab of the Create device configuration profile you will see the new Settings Catalog functionality, you can click on Add settings to configure the settings.
Clicking on Add setting will bring up the Settings picker panel, where you can use Search to search for the setting you want to make, or browse through the category.
There is also a filter available. With the filter, we can filter out settings based on applicability. Settings that are not applicable are hidden from the list.
To configure a setting, select the setting on the right and on the left configure your desired values.
Pick all the required settings from the available categories and configure them.
What’s more awesome is the information icon next to all settings which gives us much more extensive information about what the setting will do and possible values.
You can also mark a setting as Not Configured (just like we could do using GPOs)
Once you have configured the settings, click next and assign the profile to a security group of your choice.
You can also view if the settings have applied properly to the devices using the nice reporting feature of the Settings Catalog.
You can also configure profiles for MacOS using the Settings Catalog. Just choose macOS in Devices and Create the profile
Conclusion
I think Microsoft has saved a lot of time and energy for the Intune Admins by introducing such a feature. Configuring OMA-URIs were a pain and tricky to deploy and troubleshoot. The Settings Catalog is still in preview (at the time of writing this blog) with about 2000+ settings and its only going to expand further.
So what are you waiting for! Pick some test machines and test them with the settings catalog. Happy converting from GPOs to Intune… !