I’m not a big New Year’s resolution guy but I do believe that looking back at the previous year as well as setting goals for the coming year helps set up a framework for success. For this post, I’d like to share some personal and professional highlights from 2018. Personal Family To start, I’m writing this sitting next to my wife Megan as we fly back to Houston after spending 10 amazing days in Thailand celebrating 15 years of marriage.

Note 03/12/2019 - This post has been updated to support changes in 1901 TP and (I assume) 1902 CB to the TSProgressUI.exe ConfigMgr client component used for the custom described dialog below. Note: You must be running ConfigMgr/SCCM 1810 or higher to use the _SMSTSLastActionName variable included in this post. However you can use the same concepts and error dialog with previous versions (but seriously, upgrade already!). Also, go upvote the UserVoice item to have the product do this natively.

At MMS Desert Edition (MMSDE) this week, I got into a (friendly) heated debate over what qualified as BBQ where the other party offered up some very silly arguments related to pulled pork and vinegar sauce. I’m a firm believer in meat. Period. Cook it however you want, call it whatever you want. I just want to eat it. This discussion led to some additional ‘South Bashing’ by this ‘Yankee’ from North Carolina.

I began testing the ConfigMgr SMS Provider API (or AdminService as it will be called) in the 1810 Technical Preview and wrote 2 posts about it (1) & (2). With the release of the AdminService in Current Branch 1810, a few things have changed and I wanted to provide an update. Additonally, I’ve had the opportunity to chat with the ConfigMgr Product Group at #MMSDE this week and they’ve provided some roadmap information about the API and what to expect in the future.

I recently had a request to make the Continue on PC feature work on our standard Windows 10 devices. Continue on PC is a Windows 10 feature that allows users to use the Edge browser on their phone then continue the browsing session on their PC. As I started testing the feature in Windows 10, I found that the setting was disabled with the message Some settings are hidden or managed by your organization.

Be sure to check out the sequel to this post Building an Even Better Task Sequence. I’ve had this post in the queue for a while now and have been working on a script to help with some of this, but with the release of System Center Configuration Manager 1810 I don’t have to hack something together anymore! One of the best new features which allows us to capture the name of the last action using the new variable _SMSTSLastActionName.

If you have been keeping up with SCCM/ConfigMgr release notes, you will have seen that in 1806, you no longer need to have the Application Catalog Role installed in order to enable User Available applications in Software Center (if you didn’t already know, yeah, that was a requirement previously). If you were like me, this was one of your first actions after upgrading to 1806. Unfortunately, there appears to be a bug with removing the role that causes clients to stop seeing User Available software in Software Center.

There are numerous types of application and deployment options in ConfigMgr/SCCM today. Everything from traditional MSI to the new MSIX and Windows Store apps. Throw in Co-Management and Intune and you get even more options. Deployments can be targeted to specific devices and users. Most companies use some mix of these to get software onto devices. Some people even still refuse to use the Application model in ConfigMgr in favor of the Package model because of that one time they had trouble with it back in 2012.

Update 12/04/2018: Check out the latest info on the SMS Provider API. I posted last week about the OData connector that is included in ConfigMgr Technical Preview 1810. I did some more digging this past weekend and made a few more discoveries. Additionally, I ran into some issues during testing and was able to get in touch with some of the team working on the new AdminService and they gave me some great insight on my findings.

I went to Microsoft Ignite 2018 for the first time this year. During the week, I got to chat with lots of folks, including some of the SCCM/ConfigMgr product group. Mark Silvey was kind enough to chat with me about plans for the OData connector that was first introduced in ConfigMgr 1612 Technical Preview. When it was first released it was called CMRestProvider and it had to be enabled in the console (you can read more about this initial implementation here).