Finally completed my first real handsfree Intune Deployment. It's almost perfect. Printers, networks, wi-fi connections, vpn and security all just happened. Just one App I couldn't deploy. The app itself is buggy as **** and I can see that it installs ancient MS dependencies - it integrates with Office 365. Integration is OK but users spend a lot of time in support and I spend a lot of time un-corrupting their exchange mail boxes. Unfortunately its the only game in town for their market - so I have just deployed the installer and tell users to run it. I did extract the installer.exe but there is no MSI inside 
, so I can't log anything between "Launching Installer"and "Install Failed", I allow 60 minutes. Support's response to how do I do a silent install was you should ask your IT department we don't do that.
I also discovered that real engineers are under no immediate threat from AI. I confess I could not have done it without their help but I have never taken the time to learn powershell. To me its clunky, verbose and messy. Kind of like comparing C++ or Java with lots of heavyweight frameworks to plain old C. Give me bash any day. Ok I've just given my age away
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I created my own debugging and logging scripts to wrap whatever it gave me and always test locally before deployment (and some stuff I can't). I also now do a detailed code review as my skills improve...
Typical exchange
Me: I need a script to be depoloyed via Intune to Windows 11 Pro clients to do xxx running in the user context. Please also give me a detection script so that I can tell if it is already installed.
AI: Here are your scripts (and instructions for creating the deployment package)
Me: Are you sure about line nn in your detection script. How can a remotely run script detect user specific environment variables.
AI: Good catch you are absolutely right, here is an updated version
Me: Ok the deployment script failed here is the outputfrom the log I created myself
AI: Ah that can happen in 64 bit systems
Me: But I told you its Windows 11, have you ever seen a production Windows 11 system running 32 bits
AI: You are absolutely right, the parameter for blah should have been blah, would you like an updated script
Me: No thanks , I've already done it.
Me: That still didn't work - in the end I had to ...
AI: Got it — and that makes perfect sense based on how ...
AI: Here's a polished version of the blah script based on your confirmed working...
Me: Good night!
So it save me loads of learning time - but if I had up to date skills it would probably have taken me 10% of the time it did.
And don't get me started on Microsofts Azure AD implementation. They have completely broken LDAP compatability - pretty sure that's intentional so you can pay a lot more for their directory services.
, so I can't log anything between "Launching Installer"and "Install Failed", I allow 60 minutes. Support's response to how do I do a silent install was you should ask your IT department we don't do that. I also discovered that real engineers are under no immediate threat from AI. I confess I could not have done it without their help but I have never taken the time to learn powershell. To me its clunky, verbose and messy. Kind of like comparing C++ or Java with lots of heavyweight frameworks to plain old C. Give me bash any day. Ok I've just given my age away
.I created my own debugging and logging scripts to wrap whatever it gave me and always test locally before deployment (and some stuff I can't). I also now do a detailed code review as my skills improve...
Typical exchange
Me: I need a script to be depoloyed via Intune to Windows 11 Pro clients to do xxx running in the user context. Please also give me a detection script so that I can tell if it is already installed.
AI: Here are your scripts (and instructions for creating the deployment package)
Me: Are you sure about line nn in your detection script. How can a remotely run script detect user specific environment variables.
AI: Good catch you are absolutely right, here is an updated version
Me: Ok the deployment script failed here is the outputfrom the log I created myself
AI: Ah that can happen in 64 bit systems
Me: But I told you its Windows 11, have you ever seen a production Windows 11 system running 32 bits
AI: You are absolutely right, the parameter for blah should have been blah, would you like an updated script
Me: No thanks , I've already done it.
Me: That still didn't work - in the end I had to ...
AI: Got it — and that makes perfect sense based on how ...
AI: Here's a polished version of the blah script based on your confirmed working...
Me: Good night!
So it save me loads of learning time - but if I had up to date skills it would probably have taken me 10% of the time it did.
And don't get me started on Microsofts Azure AD implementation. They have completely broken LDAP compatability - pretty sure that's intentional so you can pay a lot more for their directory services.
