Episode 398 – PowerShell and Intune with Harm Veenstra

Welcome to Episode 398 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode Ben meets up with Harm Veenstra at the annual Microsoft MVP Summit. They chat a bit about Harm experience as an MVP and his path to becoming an MVP. Then the move into a few technologies near and dear to Harm, PowerShell and Microsoft Intune. They start off talking about some of the ways Harm uses PowerShell and some of his favorite scripts. They talk about how he uses PowerShell with Intune, in particular using it with remediation scripts. Harm Veenstra Harm started working at 18, from a ServiceDesk employee to a workspace and system engineer at a large insurance firm in the Netherlands. 1996, those were the days! After working there for almost 11 years, Harm had different system engineer jobs and learned much about Citrix, Cisco, VMWare, storage, and Microsoft. Currently, He's employed at NEXXT (https://www.nexxt.one) as a Consultant, mainly in Endpoint Management, but He does anything Microsoft 😉 (Client, Server, 365, and Azure). And… He became a Microsoft MVP in March 2024 in PowerShell! Your support makes this show possible! Please consider becoming a premium member for access to live shows and more. Check out our membership options. Show Notes PowerShell is fun w/ Harm Connect with Harm on LinkedIn Harm's MVP Profile Microsoft PowerShell documentation Microsoft Intune documentation Intune Remediations Microsoft Graph PowerShell About the sponsors Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to episode 398
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast recorded
live on 03/25/2025.
This is a show about Microsoft three sixty
five in Azure from the perspective of IT
pros and end users, where we discuss the
topic or recent news and how it relates
to you. This week, Ben and Scott are
both out at the annual MVP summit. And

(00:24):
while we can't talk about what we're learning
out here, we can talk to other MVPs
that are out here with us. So, for
this episode, Ben sits down with Harm at
Feinstra for a chat. They discuss everything from
Harm's experience becoming an MVP to what he's
been doing with PowerShell, as well as his
work around Microsoft Intune, and how he even
uses PowerShell with some of the Intune and

(00:46):
other Microsoft three sixty five work that he
does.
So we're here, MVP summit. Scott and I
are actually both out here. We do a
few interviews. So Scott's somewhere off gallivanting around
with other people, but Harm, you ran into
Scott
yesterday. Yes, sir. Right? You run a product
round table, you were talking with him, and
we're like, hey, we should do a podcast

(01:06):
interview with Harm while you're here. So Yep.
We're sitting down here in one of the
buildings at Microsoft and you wanna introduce yourself,
tell us a little bit about who you
are. Yes. Who is Harm? Who who is
Harm? My name is Harm Feynstra, typical Dutch
name. I'm a partial MVP since last year.
That's the reason why I'm here, my first
annual MVP Summit. Congratulations

(01:26):
on your first one.
Oh, it's been it's it's been a while.
It it was not easy getting there, but
Yeah.
And,
in my normal day to day thing, I'm
an IT consultant. I work for Next, which
is a company in The Netherlands,
and we do IT things for larger companies
in The Netherlands. Mostly government, hospitals, industry, those

(01:47):
kind of things. Okay. Companies that move slow
and you have lots of red tape to
cut through and Yes. But you also get
very interesting things. So, yeah, so again, congratulations
on MVP. It'll be We'll talk a little
bit more about that, but how's the summit
been so far? We're like, I mean technically
it's kind of the first
day and we can't talk a whole lot
about our experience Is that just no content?

(02:08):
No. Right. Yeah. No content, but have you
been enjoying it so far? Yes. Besides all
the sessions that I attended
so far,
getting to know and see the actual people
that you only know online here is great.
The community is great. Yep. Right. And that's
always the part like this and all the
conferences. Like, people are like, well, it's virtual.
I can see all the sessions. And it's
like It's not the same. I I did

(02:29):
that last year
because I was,
I became an MVP in March.
Okay.
And I just missed the MVP summit because
of that. And I attended a few sessions.
Firstly,
it's not the same. You don't get to
feel from the room. You don't talk to
people. You don't have the hallway
talks. Yeah. The hallway talks are, like, same
thing yesterday. There were some sessions I was

(02:51):
gonna go, so we sat down at a
table and started talking to some people, and,
like, three hours later, we're still sitting at
the table. And that's just stuff you don't
get in
virtual, whether it's this or I would say
even conferences. Like, as conferences start coming back,
whether it's Ignite, I'm assuming same thing in
The Netherlands. Some of the in person stuff
has started to be open. Meetup with fans,
so yes. Yeah. So what was your experience?

(03:13):
Like, this is always an interesting thing in
talking to different MVPs is that experience
to becoming an MVP. And I know talking
to people that aren't MVPs,
they sometimes have that question as, what does
that path look like?
Everybody, I feel like it's been a little
different in how they got there, what that
process was. So
what has that kind of been like going

(03:34):
from
moving into becoming an MVP?
Well, first, you have to really know what
it takes to become an MVP. You really
gotta put yourself out there. You have to
do your community work.
You you don't necessarily need to speak at
events. That's the thing that hold held me
back because, well, I must be a speaker.
Otherwise, I won't become an amputee. That's not
true. I do a lot for the community,

(03:56):
and that's
enough for becoming an amputee. You still need
to be like somebody like a Microsoft full
time employee or another MVP has to,
try to make you one. Yep. Yep. Fill
up that nomination. The the nomination part. Well
yep. But when that's I think it took,
like, six months for me to become an
MVP because the MVP program changed during

(04:18):
during last
September, October last year, and it took like
six months. So yeah. Got it.
Every email that you receive from Microsoft, you
think, this is the moment that they'll tell
me that my name's been and and no,
it's just another status update. It'll take some
longer. We're still working on it. Yeah. It'll
be Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting that you

(04:39):
bring up the speaker because it is. Like,
you and I were actually talking. We had
lunch together too, and we're hanging out, and
we both, like, do Facebook groups that have
a bunch of people in it moderate that,
and I know you moderate some other communities
where it's not necessarily speaking. That's
one avenue, but it can be something like
a Facebook group or moderating
a community on another website or doing podcasts.

(05:02):
You can contribute in so many ways. Yeah.
Blogs. I noticed
your blog. I went and checked out your
blog too, and I'm like, he does way
better at writing articles on his blog than
I do. My last blog post was like
a year ago. Yeah. And I think that's
another one is people are MVPs are like,
oh, I had a blog all the time.
I haven't blogged in like a year, a
year and a half. Yeah. Because I do
the podcast and I do other community stuff.
So So so you have that, but I

(05:23):
have my, like, weekly blog. And it sometimes
it's difficult. You have to have new subjects
every week. Yep. But you get good at
it. Does AI help you come up with
subjects and insight? No. No. It can help
with them all. Yeah. And it it it's
all based on things that I see at
my customers' locations, things that I automate at
home. Yeah. Those are my topics. Yeah. Okay.
Real life. Yeah. So why PowerShell?

(05:45):
Like, that's an interesting
category, and we we were talking a little
bit about that too. But how do you,
I guess, why PowerShell MVP? And then we
can even talk about how you got into
PowerShell too. So Yeah. That's one thing we
both like and I think we both do
different things with it. Yeah. But You can
use PowerShell basically for any Microsoft product because
it's almost, like, mandatory that you have to

(06:05):
have some PowerShell Some different architecture.
With it. I think it started with batch
DOS batch CMD scripting. Okay. I even skipped
the whole VBS part.
But,
yes, because you need automation. As an IT
admin, you need automation, and I don't like
clicking stuff, being a click ops kind of
guy.

(06:26):
So you automate things in. Oh, we have
people waving at us. Yeah. More friends. Right?
More more people from The Netherlands. Yes.
But you start to automate, like, everything because,
as as a good admin, you're a lazy
admin. You automate Right. You know. There's even
that website, like, to go to the lazyadminYeah..com
website for Yeah. Yeah, for PowerShell scripts. Yeah.
But yes. So so that's where everything started,

(06:48):
I guess, because I really like automating stuff
being
this smarter, more efficient at end. Yeah. Yeah.
So that's that's the thing that really drove
me to PowerShell1.zero,
if you can even call it that because
that's that's that's Monet. That's the project name
back then. That's that's been a while. I
think I did that because was so I'm
gonna go back and we'll talk about, like,

(07:10):
when you started writing PowerShell. Was that, like,
02/2006?
Two thousand '6? Yeah. Sometime in there. Yep.
Okay. So how did you start writing PowerShell
then? What moved you from because before that
it was like command line, right? Yep. Right?
You did this stuff. You're just calling executables.
Yeah. Batch scripts. Yep. Or not the batch,
batch files. Right? Yep. Yeah. So how do

(07:31):
what caused you to kinda transition into PowerShell?
What drew you to PowerShell?
Because I tried automating
analyzing logs using batch scripting, and it took,
like, weeks of getting the right formats. And
I tried it in PowerShell
even with the early versions, and I was
done in fifteen minutes. Okay. So, yeah, I
really saw the power of it straight away.

(07:52):
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I started so
I came SharePoint background. Yep.
And that's where I was going in my
head when I was thinking about PowerShell one
was
Yep. PowerShell '2 thousand seven, which beta started
coming out 02/2005, '2 thousand '6, had STS
ADM. It was their whole command line interface.
Yep. And I started writing PowerShell scripts to

(08:13):
wrap around the command line interface so that
I could put, like, command line interface
commands to go work with different SharePoint sites
in a loop because writing a loop in
PowerShell was way easier than
Yeah. So so you've been doing PowerShell for
quite a while then. Yeah. How have you
seen that change over time? Like, how have

(08:34):
you gotten excited about it? We're talking about
one. Today, we're at version seven. Version seven.
Yeah. Yeah. How has it kinda changed and
evolved
and even how you've used it over the
course of the last or even the sun
really will know? We got it. The last,
like, six, eight Eighteen eighteen years, nineteen years?
Yeah. It's been a
well, since PowerShell version two and three four

(08:57):
came out and since version five, which is,
like, basically included in every Windows version now
Yep.
It has evolved from just being there for
Windows
to also being that's PowerShell six core to
a multi platform thing. And that's the thing
that I really like about Microsoft, not tiny
bit of Microsoft
advocates
here, but, the the whole cross platform thing.

(09:18):
You can run it on Linux, you can
run it on macOS, you can run it
on Windows. Yep.
Make make stuff so much easier. It's it's
platform independent now. Yeah. What's that so I
guess, do you run it on macOS? What
do you use? Do you have you switched
to macOS or you No. No. No. Still,
I'm I'm a I'm a hardcore Windows user.
Okay. Yeah.
But I used it on Linux, even on

(09:38):
my Raspberry Pi at home, for example. You
can use it on everything. Yep. Yeah. It
was it was fun. Like, I got excited
about that too because I've been a Mac
guy for years, and if you've listened to
the podcast, you know I've
kind of You tried to use it to
Windows and, like,
oh, man. But
it is nice to see it and have
that ability to use it across all of

(09:59):
them. Yeah. You only have to learn it
once, and you can reapply it on multiple
OS. Exactly. Or even in the cloud, like,
you can go to run it in Cloud
Shell now, which I think, technically, I think
Cloud Shell runs a lot on a Linux
back ground. It's like a Linux container that's
being started. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're writing
PowerShell in the cloud, you're actually using Linux.

(10:20):
Yeah. It runs on Linux. Yeah. Like like
most of the things in Azure. It does.
Yeah. So what are ways you use PowerShell?
Like, as you, again, started using a cross
platform, day to day work,
what are some of those ways that you
found that that you really enjoy it, that
save you a bunch of time?
Mostly the automation part of the the whole

(10:40):
use management thing, but also for the migrations
that I do, mostly for, like, exchange line
migrations.
I just script all the best creation stuff
out so that I don't need to, like,
manually CSV everything or I can be so
much more
productive and faster in creating stuff than using
their normal click ups kind of way. Yeah.
Yeah.

(11:01):
So you said Exchange migrations? Yep. Also. That's
one. What other one? Exchange?
A lot of Microsoft three sixty five or
even outside of Microsoft three sixty five? Microsoft
Graph interfaces for creating stuff in Intune,
configuration profiles, platform scripts, those kind of things.
Yep.
Okay. Do you have a favorite? Like, if
do you have a library of all these

(11:23):
scripts that you've written that you have? I
have my own GitHub repository, and I have
the one that I use to provide. One?
Do you keep it private so we can't,
like, go and get it? Yes. And we
also have a company one. Yep.
That's really customer related stuff in there. Right.
Well, a lot of it's, like, almost intellectual
property. Right? Like Yeah. As a company, because
I've done the same thing. I'm always on
that fence of especially as an MVP. Yeah.

(11:44):
Do I create a bunch of scripts that
I share externally? Do I try to keep
some of them internal? And Yeah. I like
sharing with the community, and the community, also
shares a lot of stuff with me. So
you'll benefit from that, but you can't share
every line of code. Yeah. Especially when you
really invest hours in customers' time. Yes. So
it can't. Right. You can't, like, get paid

(12:04):
to write a script for a customer and
then just be, oh, here. Here it's it
now. Yeah. No. Do you have a favorite
like, if you think through your repositories and
all the scripts you've written, did you ever
write one that you're, like, you were just
so proud of? You're like, oh, the script
is amazing. This is the best script I've
ever written. Or
I I think the one that I used
for Windows Sandbox, if you know the the

(12:27):
the the Windows feature that you can actually
run like a
disposable Windows VM on Windows, Windows Sandbox. I
have not played with that.
You can put that on your back wall.
I'm a Mac OS. Go on my list.
Yeah. You can tell you listened to the
package. You're like, just add it to your
list. You never do.
Yeah. But I can spin up a, a
Windows sandbox, connect my Versus code to it,
and start running my code in a in

(12:48):
a disposable
doesn't even matter if I completely screw that
VM up.
That's the whole process. So it makes my
personal development a lot easier. Got it.
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Remember, Intelligink focuses on the Microsoft cloud so
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So do you tend to do that then
when you're writing these scripts to spin them
up in a separate sandbox just to? Yes.
And especially to test them because if it
runs on my machine, I can't put my
machine in production for everybody. So it has
to run on on a key machine as

(14:14):
well. Yep. So Okay. I always test my
code like that. Yep. Got it. So that
script to just kind of spin it up,
you're like, I'm gonna go develop scripts. So
I spin up that sandbox. Yep. And I
can connect my Versus code to it and
immediately start developing in a Windows VM
safely. Okay. Yep. So does that script do
all of that then from spinning it up
to Yep. Just like installing

(14:35):
or installing Visual Studio. Running the script actually
starts up the Windows Sandbox installs feature. If
it's not already installed,
it pushes out the the agent to it.
It tries to determine what IP address it
has, and it connects official code with using
SSH.
The whole
step step step step. Yeah. Yes. Yep. Alright.
Very cool. And any other types of automation

(14:56):
that
Hyper V management for my lab environment. Yes.
Okay. Completely Windows updating all my Windows VMs
because
it's been a hassle to update, like, 20
VMs, keep them up to date, so I
automate them. Yep. That that's why you gotta
use Azure. What about those Azure VMs and
spinning those up?
Yeah. But those cost a lot more than
what I have on my laptop. Yeah.

(15:17):
Yeah.
Yeah. I I run a lot of stuff
on my laptop just because, oh, I do
have my MPM, my partnership,
official studio, like, 150
a month. Yep. But that's usually not enough.
It goes back. Yeah. Yeah. You you run
through that money in a hurry. Yeah.
What are their lessons learned? Like as you've

(15:38):
gone through and worked with PowerShell
over the years as you've learned about it,
if other people are wanting to get started
with PowerShell or like you'd be like, you
know what, you wanna start learning it, here's
a tip or a trick, here's something that
I was struggling with.
Like how would you guide people?

(15:59):
I used to be Yeah. I mean I
would've can't hope a lot of people use
PowerShell, but every bit there's always people that
are new to it, right? Yeah. If you're,
like, really new to it, Microsoft Learn has,
like, a a complete course. I think it's
AAC 40
c something. Okay. You can you can you
can find it on Microsoft Learn.
This has, like, a really
step by step first introduction to PowerShell.

(16:23):
And
if you're feeling comfortable with that, then you
can start writing your scripts. But the things
that I did in the past, like hard
coding stuff, not making things, like, reusable,
that's the thing that you learn just by
practicing more. It's not something you develop, like,
straight away. Yeah. Writing
writing functions, which kind of brings into The

(16:43):
next time We talked about this even getting
into PowerShell, like, developers.
Scott and I always joke about making fun
of developers, and we're not developers. But then
you write PowerShell, and even some of the
conferences and stuff put PowerShell under a development
track.
What are your thoughts? Scripting, coding, development?
How do you I don't see myself as

(17:04):
a developer. No. I'm I'm not like a
c sharp developer.
I'm a I'm a scripter. That's I think
that's the correct term for it. I I
I use a framework which is already there
to my benefit, but I'm not really a
programmer. I can't build this from scratch. Okay.
No.
But you still can go write functions. Right?
Do you still need, like, mini programming? Maybe.
No.

(17:24):
No. But but functions are good. Reusable functions,
creating modules. Yep. Yep. I have not done
much with creating modules. Have you created a
bunch of different modules too? Like I'm I'm
I'm working on that because that's a skill
that I don't master at at this moment
because
writing separate scripts and functions is a lot
easier than Right. Publishing a
mobile module to the PowerShell gallery, that's a

(17:45):
thing that I still want to do, but
that's something something's holding me back. And perhaps
it's scary because more people will see your
codes and Uh-huh. Will probably comment on that.
Yep.
Do you have a module you wanna publish,
like, in the back of your mind? You
don't have to share which one, but are
you like, I wanna create a module to
do this? I wrote two or three scripts
for Active Directory permissions reporting stuff, which is

(18:06):
really easy for the auditing stuff that I
also do for customers. Okay. Finding a module
for that would be great because it's so
much easier to download, install, and use that
in a customer's environment in a in a
way that you should actually do that. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Very cool. Any other tips or
tricks as you think about
PowerShell,
different

(18:27):
I know you talked about there's another vendor
that
you've done some podcasts for
script script runner, I think. Are there other
tools that you've used
like script runner? I know I am always
in Versus Code when I'm writing PowerShell, but
any other tools that you've used that you
really like when you're
writing some of those scripts? ScriptRunner is more

(18:48):
like a platform, but for for tool wise
things. Yeah. That when I see people starting
IEC again,
and I've had I always tell them, no.
Yes. No. Why? Why? Please use Versus Code
because it's it's so much better. And it
can do version five and version seven. The
IEC only does five. So Yeah. You're you're

(19:08):
really limiting yourself. But Fisco is great. PowerShell
development is is really great. Yeah. I keep
waiting for Microsoft to, like, forcefully remove ISE
from
all these different Windows versions or because it's
still is it it's still in Windows is
it in Windows 11? I haven't even looked.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It's it's still there. If
you use things like out grid view, which,

(19:29):
like, kind of shows, like, a Windows pane
of the things that you selected, it's it's
a user's IC. So if you remove that,
you also remove that capability from your strips.
Yeah. So you have to be aware of
that. Technical debt that Microsoft has incurred with
some of this stuff. Yeah. It's the most
people ask the most questions about why isn't
PowerShell seven included in Windows by default. And
that's the whole

(19:50):
Windows shipping, the amount of work you have
to put into it, the dot net framework,
dependencies of that. So yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll
see that in future. Maybe I know. I
haven't ran into that with as I've been
playing more in Windows again and switching some
of mine, like, you open up the terminal
and I'm like,
oh, yeah. PowerShell seven isn't here. I need
to go install it, and then I need
to switch my terminal to default to PowerShell

(20:12):
seven instead of PowerShell five. Yeah. And the
the most things that you do probably even
still work in five. They do. It's surprising.
And I every once in a while, I
still actually do run into stuff that doesn't
work yet in seven. Okay. I think some
of the dependent some of the stuff in
core maybe isn't fully there yet. There's some
stuff again, being a SharePoint guy, I ran

(20:33):
into this, and this was part of my
motivation for switching back to Windows
is,
well, it works on macOS. There are certain
modules
that rely on certain DLLs or certain Yeah.
The whole SharePoint yeah. Right. Certain underlying files
that just aren't there on macOS and just
they don't work there. Yeah. So that's why

(20:53):
you need and using, like, a Windows VM
on your Mac kinda yeah.
It runs better on a native, Windows laptop.
Yeah. It it does. As much as I
do miss my Mac, there are certain things
as I've scripted that Yeah. They do still
just work better on Windows. Yep. So what
other stuff with cloud? I know we talked
about you do some Intune stuff.

(21:13):
When it comes to PowerShell,
you talked about some of the stuff with
AD, with Hyper V. How have you used
PowerShell as it relates to some of the
cloud stuff, to Microsoft three sixty five,
Intune, Entra?
The whole Microsoft Graph thing. Yeah. Yeah. Besides
as Graph, it's still
somewhat hard to learn and it's there are
a lot of commandlets in it. You really

(21:35):
need to know to how to navigate through
that. But using Microsoft Graph to automate all
the intra creation of users, mailboxes,
or
things that you can do in Intune using
Microsoft Graph,
getting I use this for reporting a lot.
Okay. Yeah. The customers will want reliable reports.
They wanna have good overviews and I yeah.
There's no way around it. You have to

(21:56):
script. Right. Yep. Yeah. Pull it all out.
And so once you pull it out, you
write your PowerShell script, go pull it all
from the graph. Do you tend to just
pull it from the graph and export it
to a CSV or Excel to do reporting?
Or how do you Most customers still like
receiving stuff in Excel files. So CSV,
okay. But there's an import Excel module from
Darkthink

(22:16):
that will you can write to Excel straight
away or read from Excel if needed. It's
it's easier for Yes. Yeah. So is that
what you do? Do you export to Excel?
You might be more efficient than that. I
always I like the import and export to
CSV. Yep. So then I just do it
to CSV, and then I open it up
in Excel and save it as Excel for
them. Yeah.
And then you do the automation parts yourself
being a click off. Yeah.

(22:38):
Yeah. But you can export it straight away
to Excel. It makes it a lot easier
for the managers to receive their reports. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Do you ever build
visuals for them too or do you just
as a primarily, here's the data. Yeah. Here's
the data. Yeah. What visuals do you want?
No. I'm I'm I'm not the creative
visualizer guy for the for the ultimate reports.
No. No.
It's it's part of the data. Got it.

(23:00):
So what else is Intune?
And I'm curious,
like, you're a PowerShell MVP, but even talking
to Scott when he met you, he's like,
hey Ben, you're gonna go talk to Harm.
He's PowerShell and Intune. And I'm like, PowerShell
and Intune. That's a that's a unique combination
of
a little specialties. Like usually you're like PowerShell
and Windows. One or the other. Yeah. Right.

(23:21):
Or even like PowerShell and Microsoft three sixty
five, but it's, like, PowerShell and Intune.
So how did you kinda get into the
Intune spot and stuff, and what do you
do with Intune? For our customers, we do
Intune
things to for the Windows devices, obviously.
Okay. And
all the packaging detection script, platform scripts,

(23:41):
remediation scripts, for example. Yeah. So have you
written quite a few remediation scripts then too?
Yep. Yep. Because we have to have, like,
an e three license for it. So that's
the downside of it. So it's not for
every customer. Yeah. But remediation is so powerful.
Yeah. Being able to
hourly during the day or once a day
check for it's like a desired state thing
you can do if remediation's good. Yep. Yeah.

(24:04):
What are definitely powerful
do you ever get frustrated that they only
run once a day?
Yeah. But you you you can let them
rerun for every hour Okay. Based on group.
So you assign a group and say every
hour, every two hours, every three hours, once
a day, once a week, once
Once ever, run those remediation.
What's a Is there a common one, like
a certain remediation script that

(24:25):
Maybe it's This is right independent. Like, there's
a shortcoming in Intune, whether it's installing a
certain software or a certain setting that isn't
in Intune that you always wanna set. Is
there a common remediation script that you've written
for Intune that you use a lot that
Time zone settings for international customers is one
of those. If you have, like, a customer
who's in different regions Mhmm.

(24:46):
How would you determine what time zone they're
in and what the best time zone would
be for them. But I automated that in
remediation
script. So it detects what's my public IP
address, what reason is it, what time zone
should I have, and it just configures your
time zone. And if you move from one
time zone to another, it will do that
too. Got it. Wow. That's pretty cool. Yep.

(25:06):
Is that one available publicly? Yeah. It's on
my blog. That one's on your blog? Yeah.
Okay. So it will definitely include, like, I'll
go get links to your blog too and
include links to your blog. So if people
wanna go see which scripts you've shared publicly,
they can go see that. But also the
Intune besides
remediation scripts, so you just kind of fell
in is that how you kinda get into
Intune? Was you were writing scripts and Writing

(25:28):
scripts for them. You needed to push them
out somewhere? But also as a as a
platform because I like controlling Windows devices and
that well, it's the is
the software for that, of course. And for
the whole Intune packaging,
deploying settings, it's more powerful using PowerShell scripts
for it than the things that you sometimes
see in the settings catalog. Yeah. Yep. So

(25:50):
this is something I played with. I can't
remember why I was doing this.
One point in time, I'm curious if you
ever tried this, I actually packaged up a
PowerShell script Mhmm. As,
A Win 32 app? In in yeah. An
Intune a Win 32, I was trying to
think of. Yeah. I was like A Zoom
Win app. Essentially, it's an Intune Win app
to push it out that way versus a

(26:10):
remediation script. Yeah. That's that's that's the four
man's
remediation script, I guess. If you don't have
a free license, like, this is premium, you
can use that. Yeah. It it it also
works. You can let let it redetect
the whole time and just reinstall the software
or the script. Right. Yep. It does work.
Yep. It's it was an interesting workaround for
something I was trying, and I can't remember

(26:30):
if it was a licensing thing or what.
But that's one thing, like, those Win 32
apps, it's they're not just go install an
executable or an MSI, but, really, you can
go in and put whatever files you want
to in there Yeah. And say, to run
the install
for this particular Win 32 app, it's a
dot p s one file or a dot
or a batch file or all kinds of

(26:51):
different things. If your detection is good, and
it can be the same, like a remediation
script, you can even use applicability scripts on
it. Okay. Additional requirement scripts
so that it will only fire to certain
device in a certain state, etcetera.
Yeah. There's a lot of powerful stuff that
you can do again that I don't think
is always readily available. But if you get

(27:13):
in and try to
hack around with some of the stuff, there's
also encounter the situation that you actually need
it for. But yeah. Yeah. So what else
with Intune? Do you have any other favorite
Intune features, things you like to do with
Intune?
Well, the things from Intune Suite,
and I know that IntuneSuite is an additional
license yet again,
$10.12 dollars, I don't know, per user per

(27:33):
month, I guess.
It yeah. If I had one okay. If
I had not one piece of complaint. But,
yeah, all the stuff, it just keeps adding
up. But in two suite yes. In engine
suite, using the cloud PKI for for example,
it's so much easier for kinda
radius like Wi Fi authentication, for example. You
can use it for that as well. Yep.

(27:55):
Yeah. That is These nice add ons. Yep.
I haven't started playing with that yet.
Another thing from my list.
Oh, Harmar, give me more stuff for my
list. No. I actually have one of the
contractors that does some work for me, he's
started playing with that a little bit. Yeah.
But it's like, why does Again, I feel
like that's a fairly common function. The PKI
being able to use that for Or the
remote health. Like why do we have to

(28:16):
pay
an extra $10 a month for that one?
Maybe remote health I can see because Yeah.
That's if you're not doing that, you're going
and paying another third party for some of
the remote. Well, important. Privilege management, the kind
of privilege identity management for starting certain executables.
Yep. I can see a lot of value
in that, but it's worth the top I
don't know. Yeah. Or either. But there is

(28:38):
have you played with the global secure access
in Yeah. The Yep. The Yep. Well, technically,
that's not even an Intune suite, is it?
That's another add on. Yeah. That's that's an
intro add on, I guess. Yes. That one
is. That's right. That one's an intro add
on, not Intune suite. Bundles and add ons
and licenses. Every way. It's time for that
p what do we or an e, what
do we need next? An e seven An
e seven or an e three

(29:00):
Yeah. Entra license. Yes.
Oh, very cool. Anything else? Let me talk
PowerShell,
MVP,
Intune,
anything you're anything that you're allowed to talk
about that you're excited to To see this
week
or Not to see this week. We're not
gonna talk about anything this week. I'm trying
to think because it all jumbles up in

(29:21):
our heads, right, of what's been announced. But
anything this year that's public knowledge that you're
Really looking forward to. Looking forward to,
if it's not all jumbled up in your
head. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm not sure if
there's something that I'm really, really looking forward
to because I'm already using most of the
stuff that's being there. Got it. Anything with
Copilot? Okay. Anything with AI or anything with

(29:42):
AI that you'd like to see in this
year as it relates to Intel? I'm actually
one of the IT admins who doesn't use
AI at all Okay. I guess. And that's
becoming, like, rare, I guess. I can see
it using being used for my documents, for
the reporting stuff that I have to do,
like, rewrite this whole chapter for me. Yeah.
Yes. But using AI for a PowerShell script,

(30:03):
for example, no. But that's not something that
I use it for. So you don't do
you don't even use any of the, like,
the GitHub Copilot
stuff yet or anything like that? For it.
No. But I'm impressed. I will say I
am impressed. I've
I've started using it. It It's it's a
good starter kit. Yeah. But I like to
write my write and learn at the same
time. Yep. Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. Well, anything

(30:26):
else if people wanna get a hold of
you, obviously, we'll put a link to your
blog in the show notes. Yep. Social media
On every platform, I think. Every platform? Yeah.
Alright. Well, I'll get all the links from
you for that. We'll put them all in
the show notes so people wanna connect with
you and reach out. Anything else you wanna
tell everybody?
Last wise words that I wise words you

(30:47):
got, your your words of wisdom.
Start scripting, not not yesterday, but just today.
Yeah. Just Just start writing. Alright. Well, thanks,
Arman. Appreciate you sitting there. Thanks for having
me. Chad, not a problem.
Again, it's fun just sitting here meeting people,
being able to do podcast interviews. So Yep.
Enjoy the rest of the MVP summit. I'm
sure we'll see you around, and thanks again.
Appreciate the chat. Thanks.

(31:11):
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(31:31):
day.