So I wrote my first App

And it was exhausting! I've never really been interested in coding, but with being in front a computer a lot more I've been able to spend a bit of time learning some new skills. It started off by wanting to learn some more about interacting with the Workspace ONE APIs, but I ended up wanting to add 'just that little bit more' until I ended up with something I'm somewhat happy with.

I am sure the code is very inefficient and I had to learn a lot of new concepts but what I've created is - Workpace ONE COVID-19 Notifier

What it allows you to do is obtain the latest COVID-19 Statistics for your Country and send a message to Workspace ONE users and devices.

Read on to see how I can see this being used!

Managing Windows 10 Applications with Workspace ONE UEM

VMware has done a lot of work in the past few years with Application Deployment as part of our Windows 10 Management capabilities.

That is why it's taken me so long to get to this article - I didn't know where to start without being overwhelmed!

For Application Deployment on Windows 10 with Workspace ONE UEM, we (predominantly) support .MSI .EXE and .ZIP files as installers. We also have a lot of parameters and capabilities around deploying these to cover many scenarios. Below you'll find a good overview of what we can do and why you may want to choose one over the other.

Delivering complex Windows 10 app install routines in Workspace ONE UEM

With Windows being around for 30 years, it is no surprise that the software and configuration baggage its brings along with it to enterprise is extensive.

Unlike the truly modern mobile world, Apps for Windows 10 are typically not just a single file that lands on the device and runs with configuration being sent over APIs along with the install. Microsoft in some way have tried to transition to this with its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) Apps from the Microsoft Store and Microsoft Store for Business, but in my experience I have yet to see any organisation deliver (or develop) and truly enterprise level application using this platform.

This is why we are still nearly completely reliant on traditional Win32 Apps and needing to find a way to manage those "legacy" formats and processes in a modern management framework. VMware Workspace ONE UEM has made massive investment in development and enhancement in these capabilities and our customers are continuing to see our leadership in this space. We've talked a lot about how we can simply and robustly deliver .MSI and .EXE files and at scale, however its most often used when deploying a single installer with maybe a transform file and some checks to see if there's enough disk space.

But what if your install routine is more complex?

Microsoft Autopilot with VMware Workspace ONE UEM

One of the biggest misconceptions I seem to come across is that Windows Autopilot is only available to devices being managed by Microsoft Intune.

For those who aren't aware, Autopilot is a capability from Microsoft that allows pre-configuration for Windows 10 devices in conjunction with the Out-Of-Box-Enrollment (OOBE) experience. One of the
biggest capabilities is gives that you can directly ship an end-user a Windows 10 device and as soon as it is powered on, it will show the user a customised login screen during OOBE requesting the user to enter their credentials. Once successfully authenticated the result is that the device will be joined to Azure AD, automatically enrolled into Workspace ONE and all the user's apps and configurations are automatically installed.

There are a few steps to getting this configured and my obvious implication here is that you have integrated Microsoft Azure AD with VMware Workspace ONE. I won't be going into detail about how to integrate Workspace ONE UEM and Azure AD to enable the general OOBE capabilities as this is already well documented, however below I will cover off the steps and requirements to configure Autopilot and how to assign the Autopilot profiles out to a device to get the best outcome for your end users.

Let's have a look how things all fits together.