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- Welcome to Desktop Deployment Essentials,
our series designed to help you plan and make the shift
to the latest Windows 10 release,
whether you're coming from Windows 7, Windows 8,
or a previous version of Windows 10.
Windows 7 end of support is just
around the corner in January 2020.
And if you haven't made a lot of progress
on your Windows 10 upgrade,
the resources highlighted in this series
are designed to help,
with the tools you're probably already using.
I'll also tell you about how you can access help
at no cost from our deployment experts at Microsoft
as you roll out Windows 10.
Just about every organization is either midstream,
or complete with their move to Windows 10.
In fact, what we're seeing is more than 65%
of all commercial PCs have now been upgraded,
and the rate of deployment just continues to accelerate.
Now if you've started and are blocked,
and the majority of your PCs are still on Windows 7,
chances are, you're concerned about one
of the following things.
Compatibility of the apps and the hardware that you manage,
maybe you're not ready to move to the cloud services
like Office 365, Azure Active Directory,
or Microsoft Intune.
Or maybe you just don't know where to start,
and you need someone to help guide you through the process.
The good news is we can help on all fronts.
First, we've introduced new tools
with Desktop Analytics to make data-driven decisions
for the systems that are ready to upgrade,
leveraging compatibility data from hundreds of millions
of PCs and devices and their apps.
Application compatibility is not
the challenge that it used to be.
We've been working with IT teams around the world
validating more than a quarter of a million
applications in the process.
And you know, for every thousand apps that we test,
that work in Windows 7, less than two
have had compatibility issues with Windows 10.
To be precise, that's 16/100 of 1%
of the applications that we have validated
have compatibility issues with Windows 10.
That's just incredible.
If you find one of those rare apps that does not work
with Windows 10, you can contact our engineers
in the Desktop App Assure program at no cost,
and we'll help you debug and fix
any compatibility applications.
Check out more details at aka.ms/DesktopAppAssure.
Next, if you're concerned about moving to the cloud
as a part of your Windows 10 upgrade, don't worry.
You can leverage your existing tools
like Configuration Manager, Active Directory,
and the Volume Activation Services
as you move to Windows 10.
That said, moving to the cloud should still be a priority,
and there are some huge benefits, like using OneDrive
for backup and secure file access across all your devices,
Windows Autopilot to configure new PCs directly
from the cloud without needing to reimage them,
and Desktop Analytics to provide data-driven
device readiness reports that save you testing time
as you stay current with the latest Windows 10 updates.
As you move to Windows 10,
our recommendation is that you also deploy
the cloud-connected Office 365 ProPlus apps.
And moving forward, the majority of the new
management value will come through the cloud.
You really do need to add Intune
to your Configuration Manager deployments to get the power
and the intelligence of the Microsoft Cloud.
Next, if you feel stuck or blocked,
or are just looking for personal assistance,
we just launched a new fast-track service
to help you upgrade to Windows 10.
Our engineers can help you create upgrade task sequences
to drive scalable and automated Windows 10 deployment
through Configuration Manager.
Check out aka.ms/FastTrackWindows10 to learn more.
With the January 2020 Windows 7
end of support date in sight,
in-place upgrades are a great option for quickly
and reliably moving to Windows 10 for your current devices.
And if you're replacing PCs as a part of your deployment,
or you need to reimage some of your PCs,
the Desktop Deployment Center walks you
through all the core tasks and options
in a way that sets you up to take advantage
of cloud automation in the future,
such as Windows Autopilot and Intune.
This includes considerations for Office
as well as options to implement cloud-driven services
to round out and modernize your deployment
with Azure Active Directory, OneDrive, and more.
As you do your upgrades, do it in a way
that's efficient today and sets you up for the future.
I'll give you a brief introduction into what to expect
as you follow the deployment process wheel,
and you can keep following this series to get a deep dive
on each step in the corresponding tools and processes.
These steps will apply to just about any
client operating system with deployment,
and most of these can be worked on in parallel to save time.
Okay, starting at the top, device and app readiness.
This is the first step, and it relates
to taking an inventory of your devices
and apps to verify compatibility.
For that, we've built new tools
with Desktop Analytics, which is available now,
to inventory and analyze your apps and devices.
We tap into our compatibility intelligence's signal
that comes from hundreds of millions of PCs around the globe
to understand both apps and drivers,
and to assess the readiness of your desktop estate.
We'll even help you assess the compatibility
of your custom line of business applications.
For Office add-in and macro inventory and assessment,
you can use the Readiness Toolkit for Office,
and if you have Configuration Manager,
these capabilities for add-ins
are built into the hardware inventory,
and will give you a custom dashboard
to track add-in compatibility and device readiness
for newer versions of Office.
Both these tools are heavily integrated
with Configuration Manager, and your device collections,
so once devices are ready,
you can target them for the deployment.
Again, this is where if you hit a snag and find
any incompatible apps or Office add-ins,
our Desktop App Assure program can help you
at no cost, just call us.
Directory and network readiness is the next step.
And here, if you haven't already,
you'll wanna make sure your deployment
infrastructure is up-to-date.
Then optionally, you can then implement
Azure Active Directory for identity and access management,
but you can also continue to use
your on-prem Active Directory, as I said before.
And then you'll want to get your network ready
for moving system images, application packages,
and user files across your network
and to support later deployment of migration activities.
We've done a lot of work building network optimization,
spanning traffic optimization, peer-to-peer,
throttling and differential updating across ConfigMgr,
Office, and Windows, to minimize the impact of your network.
One of my favorite dashboards shows all the bandwidth
that we've saved in Configuration Manager
with Delivery Optimization globally.
And here's what one looks like that you can see
in your own Configuration Manager console.
Next is Office and line-of-business application delivery.
This ensures that your apps are ready
for automated deployment,
and you'll need to be familiar with the click-to-run
Office deployment in your configuration options.
In fact, we just published a deep dive
on Office deployment at aka.ms/OfficeITSeries,
that walks you through all the upgrades for preparing,
upgrading, and managing Office.
But beyond Office, you'll want all your other apps
packaged up and ready for automated deployment.
Next on the wheel is user files and settings migration.
And this is necessary in PC replacement scenarios
and you can use the User State Migration Tool
as a part of Configuration Manager
or your MDT task sequences at deployment time.
This step is often a timing bottleneck for PC replacement
due to the physics involved in transferring
sometimes hundreds of gigabytes per PC in each direction.
Now if you're using OneDrive,
you won't have to worry about this networking issue,
which is another reason to move to the cloud.
Now you might be asking yourself,
"How do I get my users' existing files into the cloud?"
OneDrive Known Folder Move is a new option
to back up and sync user documents, pictures,
and desktop files at scale into the cloud
ahead of your deployment.
Security and compliance is the next area,
and this is an area that has a ton of upside
when moving to Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus.
You'll want to familiarize yourself
with the new built-in capabilities
and compare that with what you already have,
then see if you can replace some of your bolt-on
security options with just native Windows 10 capabilities.
And cloud services like
Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection
give you a unified platform for security hardening,
post-breach detection, investigation, and response.
It can also safeguard you against malicious
email attachments, unsafe hyperlinks, and more.
Plus, you can standardize
this solution on both PCs and Macs.
Now this brings us to OS deployment and feature updates.
As the next step that is really about upgrading your PCs,
getting OS images deployed,
or customizing Windows installs with your apps, policies,
and configurations to a business-ready state.
A lot of the heavy lifting will be done using
Configuration Manager task sequences and infrastructure.
For new PCs, you can use Windows Autopilot
to get them to business-ready
with the apps and policies needed,
all without having to reimage those devices.
Now a big change with desktop management
is how Windows and Office are updated and serviced.
These new models mean you can continually
bring new capabilities, experiences,
and protections to your users
without waiting or bolting on more things to manage,
like you might have done in the past.
Now there are a couple of concepts that are core
to Windows and Office as a service.
The first is semi-annual feature updates,
which deliver new capabilities in the fall
and in the spring of each year, and second,
for Windows, there are monthly cumulative quality updates
that contain security, reliability, and bug fixes.
Our strong recommendation is for you to target
the second-half releases of Windows at a minimum,
and move to monthly updates of Office 365 ProPlus
so that your users continually
receive new Office capabilities.
Finally, user communication and training is critical
to driving usage of new capabilities for enhancing
teamwork, communication, security, and more.
Before broad deployment is targeted
to users outside of early adopter rings,
user communication and training should be planned
to drive desired changes in how people use
new capabilities in Office, Windows,
or other line-of-business applications and services.
Here, we also have services
from our Microsoft FastTrack team to help drive
user adoption and get the most from your upgrade.
Okay, so now you know what's new and different,
and I've walked you through your deployment options
and how we can help your team
if you encounter compatibility challenges,
or if you just want expert help from our
FastTrack engineers as you upgrade.
And once you've updated to Windows 10,
you'll want to continue on your path
to cloud-based management, to get all the benefits
of device management, Azure Active Directory,
Office 365 ProPlus, OneDrive, and more.
And just to emphasize again, you really do need to move
to the cloud for modern productivity,
deployment, management, and security.
You've seen all of the deployment considerations
around the wheel to give you an idea of the steps
and tools that we've built to help you get deployed
using your preffered processes and tools.
Now I encourage you to keep watching as we go deeper
on each step in the deployment wheel
on Desktop Deployment Essentials,
here on Microsoft Mechanics.
In fact, next up is device and app readiness.
Thanks for watching.
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