You can go to Windows Intune Springboard site for information on signing up for your beta subscription. Once you have completed the sign-up process and activated your account, you can go to https://beta.manage.microsoft.com to begin evaluating the beta. A beta subscription will allow you to deploy to up to 10 PCs, which should allow you to evaluate the improvements we’ve made.

Here are the highlights of what’s new:

Software Distribution

• Package applications, upload them to the cloud for distribution, and deploy them to your Windows Intune-managed PCs. For the beta we have provided 2 gigs of storage for this purpose. Packages can be normal applications in the form of MSIs or EXEs or third party updates. Deploying packages leverages BITS to ensure data transfer is efficient.

Better Hardware Reporting and Filters

• We do a great job of collecting hardware data, but we want to ensure we also present this information in a way that is most useful to you. To assist with this, we have introduced the hardware dashboard along with reports, which will help you view and export your hardware more easily.

Third Party License Management

• Upload and track your 3rd party and Microsoft retail or OEM license agreements - in addition to Microsoft Volume License Agreements – all in one place.

User Interface Enhancements

• Many new enhancements have been made to the user experience. In general, we made numerous changes to improve navigability. We are also introducing the ability to right-click, which will display a list of context-sensitive actions you can perform. We have also added a new administrator role, so you can now have ‘read-only’ administrators.

Remote Actions

• Execute a number of tasks on remote unattended PCs. You can invoke malware definitions to install, you can initiate a malware scan to run immediately, and you can remotely reboot a PC.

Improvements to Alerts Workspace

• We’ve introduced the ability to configure thresholds on alerts so you can filter out less important events, and focus on the ones that matter to you. We also improved the way you set up recipients for these alerts.

Support for images

• The Windows Intune client is ‘image-friendly’ and can be set up prior to image deployment. Previously, the Windows Intune client required an internet connection before it could install.

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