Transcript for:
Overview of Microsoft 365 Endpoint Admin Course

Howdy Folks welcome to the first module of the Microsoft MD 102 course for those of you that don't know yet the official name for this course is Microsoft 365 endpoint administrator and if any of you folks are new on my channel welcome welcome for those of you who have watched my other courses welcome back alright folks before we start of this first module there's a few very very important things you need to know about this course some of you might notice already if you've watched the course introduction video that I've made this MD 102 course and its exam is a replacement for the old md-100 and the MD 101 courses and exams Microsoft is retiring those two courses along with their Associated exams and this MD 102 course and exam is the replacement for that now with that in mind one would think that Microsoft would cover the content in both of those all two courses in this new one but that does not seem to be the case about 90 percent of this new course that's MD 102 course about 90 of the content is only from the old AMD 101 course hardly anything is from the old md-100 course now that is not a good thing in my opinion because previously the md-100 course is what people would do first and you can basically think of that as a prerequisite it would prepare one for the following course which would be the MD 101 course now since there is no md-100 course or replacement for that and since this course has little to no content from that course that poses a bit of a problem because now if people attend this course and they don't have that previous experience they're gonna find it very difficult to follow along on this new course so that's a bit of a problem Microsoft doesn't seem to have a solution for that yet what I'm gonna recommend you guys do this is only for the people that don't have experience in it yet if you are someone brand new in it or if you have little to no experience on Windows yet I'm going to recommend for you to go and check my playlist on my channel the one for md100 yes I'm aware the course has been retired but in the end of the day one plus one will always be two all the content in that course is still relevant and I'm not going to delete that playlist I'm going to leave it on my channel for you guys to help you out so if you don't have that knowledge the skills yet go watch that old course even though it's being retired the content is still relevant once you've finished that video course I think it's like 13 modules then you come back to those videos for this md-102 now for those of you that feel you do have the experience already well great carry on watching then you can ignore what I just said now for those of you that don't have the experience you can either go look for the playlist on my channel the playlist for the md100 or you can look in this video description down below I'm going to leave a little link there for you guys to that playlist to help you out once you've covered that then you obviously come back to this playlist alrighty now that I've covered that very important information let's get to the agenda for this specific module this very first module of this course consists of four main sections three of these sections are nearly identical to the first module of the AMD 101 I think there was only three sections in that first module and three of them are identical this one has got four sections and three of them on nearly identical only one of them is actually new the first section is called examine the Enterprise desktop the second one is explore Windows editions that's the one that's new the third one is explore Azure active directory the fourth and the last one is manage identities in Azure active directory all right guys so those are the four main sections that's not all the topics we're going to be covering in this course if you'd like a more accurate list of what is being covered in this specific module you can find that in the video description down below as well you'll find that I have listed all four sections there and in each of those sections I've listed the topics that's in those sections along with nice convenient timestamps trust me it takes me forever to get those timestamps so by all means make use of them the reason I've put them there is to help you out if you want to skip ahead to a certain topic if you want to go and revise on a certain topic whatever your personal unique situation is the time stamps are there to make your life easier as you can find what you're looking for quicker instead of having to go and skim and skim and skim for half an hour to look for what you're looking for so it's there make use of it all right guys before we jump into the first section if you haven't done it already please give this video a like I mean I just mentioned how much effort I'm putting into this for you guys there's been a lot of requests for this course for me to do it on my channel so yeah here it is give it a like it really helps me out it helps the video out and if you guys would like to know when module 2 comes out or other courses for that matter maybe consider subscribing otherwise you might not know so now that I've got my selfless promo out of the way [Music] all right folks I hope you've enjoyed that new intro something new I'm working on let's jump into that first main section of this module which is examine the Enterprise desktop in this first section the first topic we're going to be going through is benefits of modern management all right so we're going to do a bit of a comparison here if you will so first of all if we go look at traditional methods the old school way of doing things we had to go and spend a significant amount of effort and time when it comes to doing things you know whether it be deployment of operating systems softwares updates would it be you know just generally maintaining and managing people in the devices it was a significant amount of time and effort and keep in mind this was all back in the day when stuff was still on premises these days even though the majority of people are all over the place and they're working remotely and in the cloud it is actually believe it or not still easier and quicker back in the day it was difficult to support multiple form factors and this would be scenarios like BYOD which is bring your own device so back in the day yes people over the most part in the office which we call on-premises but if God forbid someone brought something other than a laptop or a desktop let's say they brought their own tablet or phone to the office and they want to use this for the purpose of work that would really throw a spanner into the works because now we had no idea how to go and manage the device and even if even if you were willing to go and do it we didn't have the means to go and do that we didn't have the software to go and do that nowadays yeah you know what it's not a problem we can manage any device anywhere anytime it's only a question of which tool or method are we going to be using to achieve that one of my personal favorite tools on methods would be Microsoft InTune for those of you that's Familiar of it that's actually one of the main things we cover in this specific course now if we look at modern management more specifically pillars of modern management it is very easy to deploy and manage things these days what are we talking about the operating systems themselves keep in mind this does not have to be Windows anymore what are we talking about the updates firmware's drivers you name it it is insanely easy and quick and convenient to do this stuff these days quite frankly you don't even need a certificate these days that's how easy stuff has gotten I almost want to go as fast as say you can get a child to go and do it that might be exaggerating a little bit but it's it's basically almost at that level at this point in time everything these days is up to date it's not just because Microsoft is forcing us to have those updates so for those of you that's been using Windows 10 and windows 11 you probably would have noticed by now Microsoft kind of forces these updates down off-roads I'm not talking about that guys we're not talking about the fact that Microsoft forces these updates down off-roads it's just in general everything is up to date what are we talking about drivers updates or Windows updates or firmware you name it everything is just up to date people can actually go home now with their device whatever it might be whatever operating system it might have on it and that device will still be up to date because we can push updates through the internet to that device so it's just a matter of what software you're going to be using and uh with a lot of these softwares unfortunately that's the only downside of my opinion if you would like to manage these devices remotely you normally need to either install a small little file onto these devices which we call a little setup or an agent or you sometimes need to enroll these devices into a platform like InTune first a lot of these platforms or tools we use are intelligent when it comes to security it's all built in I mean if you look at something like Microsoft 365 for crying out loud unfortunately this is not a 365 course but if you look at something like that every one and everything is using 365 these days if you look at the email these people's receive that's something we can all relate to believe it or not your email actually has a built-in anti-fishing anti-spoof anti-virus anti-everything built into it in the old days we technicians or we it administrators had to go through the excruciating procedure of acquiring these softwares managing these softwares keeping them up to date and doing basically everything manually ourselves nowadays you know what you don't have to all you need to do is just get 365 for something like it make sure you've got the right license and the right policies configured and everything will happen automatically in the cloud how convenient is that folks we also have proactive insights almost absolutely everything has got some sort of analytics Associated link to it or some sort of logs or monitoring tools Associated to it so if you are someone on it it's only going to be a matter of do you have the right privilege and do you have the right license but assuming you've got the right privilege and the right license there's bound to be some sort of software or tool something is you can go and make use of to keep an eye on your users their devices and your environment you'll know exactly who is doing what when where and why you'll know everything so basically what we're saying here is nothing is private anymore that's it I suppose it depends on how you look at it whether it's a good thing or a bad thing anyway folks let's move on to the second Topic in this section that would be Enterprise desktop lifecycle model so they say desktop but it's actually also applicable to laptops so let's just say the computers your users or your clients are using so when you plan on giving computers that would be laptops and desktops to your users or the users of your client you're first gonna go through a list of phases here so the very first step of phasia is to go and plan you need to go and decide what kind of computers are you going to acquire here procurement I suppose is what some people will call this what kind of computers are you going to get them desktops or laptops and once you've decided what kind of machines you're going to get them what is the specs of this machine how much RAM will you get these people how much CPU power does these machines need to have keep in mind it's not going to be the same for all people depending on who they are what department they're in and what kind of work they do some people might be able to get a lightweight machine you know something with minimal specs other folks you know if you look at it administrators for example they generally need higher spec machines due to the nature of their jobs so you might have to go and sit down of some stakeholders so if this company does not belong to you you might have to go and sit down at the I.T people of that company or some of the managers and stuff and basically just talk of them and figure out what their needs is once you decide what their needs is you're going to move on to stage two here which is to go and purchase the stuff that sounds pretty simple but it's not so some Brands and some models cost dramatically more than others so you're gonna have to go and shop around sometimes you might find a special on a certain brand or a certain model but you also want to be careful not to just go and buy the cheapest stuff you know buying the cheapest stuff can sometimes be a slippery slope because there might be a reason why it's cheap it might be bad quality so you're gonna have to do a bit of research it might truly be a bargain it might really be a special you know a promotion if you will other times they might tell you it's a promotion but it's not so do your research once you've decided on what you're going to get laptops desktops wise now it's a matter of deploying these devices to the users you're deploying the devices deploying the the stuff they need onto those devices that would be things like the operating systems the software on this operating systems drivers updates if some certain configurations need to take place you need to go and do that then we get to the top right phasia which is phase four that is when the user has the device now they're using it to do their day-to-day work that's basically where we want to end up at and then at some point in time you might need to go and step in this is probably going to happen eventually you know it's just a matter of when so at some point in time you you are the support here this is step five you're gonna have to step in this is either gonna be to go and just do normal maintenance troubleshooting but eventually it's gonna get to a point where you need to go and upgrade the user sometimes it might just be a matter of upgrading the the digital stuff you know the operating system the softwares other times you're going to find yourself a situation where you might have to go and upgrade the whole machine all together both of these will eventually happen normally we try to do them both at the same time because it's less effort it's less of an inconvenience so if we find it we need to go and upgrade your operating system we're gonna go and look at the hardware and check if we can't maybe do that at the same time and vice versa so I'm gonna go and upgrade the machine the physical machine for the person probably with more RAM more hard drive space a faster CPU because things are moving on and at the same time I'm gonna go and give the person a newer window so if they were using Windows 10 the user would now probably be using Windows 11. so that is the upgrade phase that is Step what is that step six I believe and then eventually gonna get to a point where you retire that device or that software so you're gonna have to go and retired you know eventually it's like buying a car it doesn't last forever it might last you a hundred thousand kilos or miles it might last you 200 000 500 000 but it does not last forever you can only maintain an upgrade for so long and then eventually well it's not going to handle it anymore you're gonna have to get something new all right moving on to the next topic planning and purchasing so this is now if you're going to be doing it for your company or clients company it's not always as simple as hey let's go and buy a couple of computers or a couple of servers and there you go no there's a little bit more to it so let's start with the planning stage this includes but it's not limited but we'll I think we'll cover the main ones it includes computer strategy if you look at a computer strategy stage this includes policies such as an image and Hardware standardization environment design the replacement frequency mobile device versus desktop usage bring your own device scenario policies it basically includes things like that so how often do you or the customer or the users plan on replacing their computers do they plan on using some of their old existing computers do you want to manage these devices remotely or not will people be using their own devices or will they be using the company's devices or will it be a mix of these devices all of these factors are things you need to consider they're basically variables if you will there are things you need to consider when it comes to your computer strategy then we've got computer selection this process involves choosing Hardware software and peripherals additionally it includes design configuration and application compatibility testing then we've got deployment methods each deployment method includes inherit costs to support that method often notable deployment methods are used to accommodate different scenarios you might need to determine whether a cloud-based solution addresses your deployment requirements or what requirements are needed for a device to enroll so that's now if we're talking about InTune for example so if your people are going to be making use of engine well I should actually say if you the administrator plan on making use of engine because normally users don't have much of a choice they just have to well deal with it then we've got demand forecasting so all companies are gonna have to at least make an attempt here at predicting the future it it does not just apply to this course guys it applies everywhere and all companies where we're talking about it or not and even if we talk about ID it applies it applies to all Departments of it we always need to forecast the future and predict and plan accordingly so with demand forecasting this is an organization's attempt at predicting its future Computing resource requirements so that it can determine the resources that it will need to purchase so if I currently have 500 users in my company and I have let's say 600 devices I might want to go and plan for getting a thousand devices or plan for having a thousand devices the next two or three years because I know my company or my client's company is going to grow we're going to need more devices I might need looking at or might need to start looking at laptops maybe majority of my people are working in the office at the moment on desktop computers and I can very clearly see there's a trend for people to start working more and more from home more and more remotely and for them to be able to do that they need devices like laptops or tablets so I need to maybe start planning for getting these people laptops if they're going to be working from home so that is a demand forecasting scenario then we've got design configuration this process determines which new features you will use and how you will incorporate them into the overall plan the new tools resources and available settings can help dramatically in simplifying configuration processes so that is a bit about the planning stage now looking at the next stage we've got here the purchasing stage so that would include things like Hardware Hardware typically represents approximately up to half of all costs in the purchasing phase of the computer lifecycle it is mind-boggling what some of this stuff costs I mean a computer itself for a single user maybe does not cost that much especially if you look at vent clients but if you go look at the amount of people you have and you multiply that by those pieces yeah it can very quickly spiral out of control if you look at what service cost and what some of these softwares and stuff cost in the cloud guys it gets very expensive now speaking of software we also have well software software costs include productivity applications you know whatever that company would need or your company would need it includes obviously anti-virus messaging tools like Microsoft teams or Zoom or whatever this company is using and of course groupware we've got things like accessories so this would be a wide range of computer related supplies this could be things like cables power cables video cables you know all kinds of assorted cables power supplies because let's face it things are going to blow and break keyboards mice laptop bags docking stations and of course secure access cars for those companies that want to go and make use of that we've got deployment processes The Chosen deployment method so that's the deployment of it you or this company's client uses that will directly impact the overall deployment cost there is many you can go and choose but there are actually quite a lot of companies out there that will not necessarily make use of just one they might actually go and make a com make use of a combination of deployment methods depending on a different departments and their needs and that kind of stuff so additional costs can include storage requirements or things like file service and hard disk drives USB flash drives blank DVDs if anyone is actually still using those and providing for greater bandwidth for purchasing large images and user data across a network and then guys the last part here that I want to mention regarding the purchasing stage is the hardware staging so at some point in time all this stuff you've bought now or the client has bought it's gonna arrive do you have a place to go and put this what does your client have a place they're going to put this this might not sound like a big deal to you but let me tell you I've had clients and then all those servers and computers and all that stuff will start arriving there you know trucks or whatever and then oopsie Daisy we've got nowhere to put all this stuff and then you need it you need a place to store it to put it to unpack it unbox it taste it hook it up you know and basically just generally prepare them so after the systems arrive you must prepare them for deployment so even if it's something like a laptop or a desktop I'm gonna have to get that machine ready so where am I gonna put all these laptops and desktops or whatever so I can start them up plug them in test them and where are you gonna do that you need some workspace you need some storage space is basically what I'm getting at here guys now speaking of deployment that brings us to the next Topic in this section desktop deployment and that's what Microsoft calls it but guys keep in mind this could be laptops as well desktop deployment laptop deployment it's the same kind of worms folks so when it comes to desktop deployment what a lot of companies will go and do and this is generally the way we go and do it is we configure a standardized Baseline operating system standardized computers and network access I am most certainly not gonna find myself going to each and every computer and each and every user to go and install their windows and they're going to install the applications and drivers and updates hell no you know how long that's gonna take I am definitely not gonna do that so instead what I will go and do I don't know about you guys can't speak to you guys I will go and make an image of an operating system so I'm going to go and take one computer I will install Windows on it Windows 10 or Windows 11. it's probably going to be Windows 11 these days days I will install all the updates and drivers and programs and whatever the average Department in this company will need a baseline operating system if you will like the little bullet point there says in front of you guys and once I'm happy chappie I'm going to go and store that somewhere on a server at my client service on my service and whenever I've got a new device or a new user I'm just going to go and deploy that image to that computer of that person why work harder when I can work smarter what you also want to go and do is and this is not for specific people this is more for if you plan on doing this for a whole company your whole company or your client's old company if you plan on deploying new actual devices physical devices to a whole new company or if you plan on deploying an operating system through a whole company you might want to do it in phases deployment in phases to validate configurations and scenarios prior to Broad deploy payment so what most companies will go and do this is the way I used to go and do it you will first start with what we call a pilot program so I'm gonna go and deploy these new devices or this new operating system or software whatever it is to a group of pilot users this is approximately 20 to 30 people but you can make it less or more you preferably want to make these people from different departments uh different rank they need to have different kinds of privilege different as diverse and different as possible that's basically my point here it doesn't help you get 20 people and they're all 20 from the sales department they've got the same Rank and same privilege you go and give all 20 of these guys a new laptop or desktop or a new software operating system to go and test they are happy you have no issues and when you decide to go and deploy to the Royal company only to find out that oopsie something does not work for the other departments that is not the way to go and do it guys you need to do tests we always test stuff wherever possible whether we're talking about machines operating systems drivers updates whatever you tasted whenever possible you taste it in the pilot program and if you are avengingly happy of the pilot results when you've sorted out all the Kinks and the bugs and the glitches and whatever then you go and deploy to what we call the production environment the actual rest of the company that's remaining there's a couple of considerations for enrolling devices so if you want to go and enroll devices some considerations might be where are these people so if you look at something like the pandemic covid-19 that was a bit of a situation because a lot of people were stuck at home they had to start working from home and sometimes these people went and bought themselves Brands spanking new devices now normally if someone buys themselves their own device and they want to use it for the purpose of work they could bring it into the office and we as a technicians we've gone provision that machine of what they need if they don't have the right version of Windows well we'll give it to them if they don't have the right updates or drivers of software we would give it to them if you look at something like the pandemic though people were not allowed to leave their homes in most countries they were not allowed to go to the office in most countries now how the cheese do we give that person what they need how the cheese do we enroll that device into something like Microsoft InTune it poses a bit of a problem so those are considerations I'm just thumb sucking it here guys it's not limited to that that is just an example I'm giving you guys so consideration should be how do you plan on enrolling these devices yes we can use something like Microsoft InTune which I believe they're called endpoint manager now you can use something like that to manage people's devices yes you can use something like secm to manage people's devices but there's a catch it's always a catch if you would like to manage people's devices using something like InTune these devices needs to be enrolled into the company's engine environment now if these devices are in your hands in your office you can go and do it easy peasy because you've got access to them directly but what if you've never actually seen these devices they've never actually been in your possession so to speak so there is many ways to go and do this stuff I mean if you've got them currently on InTune you can go and put them on accm if they're on accm you can go gccm CCM to put them on InTune and vice versa you can go and use Windows autopilot for those of you that know what that is I believe that's a topic later in the course so there is other ways to get the job done but that all falls into considerations you need to go and talk with your people sit down around the table if need be and discuss how do we plan on enrolling these devices what kind of devices will they use and where will these devices be are they going to be coming into the office at some point in time if not well you might need to go and discuss it guys lastly successful data migration is critical so if someone or something currently has data you need to be very careful you cannot just go and willingly upgrade or migrate or move stuff you need to make sure you do a backup heck and then you do another backup and another backup just to be set but I might be exaggerating here so when it comes to migration whether it is something as simple as moving from one machine to another like a laptop to another laptop One desktop to another desktop or something more serious like moving from one server to another server you want to make sure you do it correctly make sure you do a backup first make sure you use the right software make sure you're going to test all of this stuff so successful migration is critical even more so if it's not your data if it's another client's data because even though they might not have had such important data if God forbid something happens to that data I can guarantee you they're gonna lie about it and they're gonna say no we had this and we had that and there's very few ethical people remaining in the world most people will use any opportunity they can to throw you under the bus and say no we lost Millions worth of data you know it's it's worth millions and meanwhile the data was worth nothing but how will you know it's your word against this anyway folks let's move on to our next Topic in the section plan an application education deployment it's not as simple as hey guys let's give everybody all the applications they need or hey guys let's just deploy this application to all the people that's got laptops or desktops or hey guys let's just deploy this no there's a little bit more to it I'm gonna especially if you look at things like application inventory and compatibility so compatibility can be a real phone in people's sides I know it has been a real phone on my side when I upgrade users there's been times I would literally go to a company only to upgrade one person's machine this will be something as simple as upgrading them for Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 or upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11. one person one machine I need to go and upgrade and believe it or not that machine would keep me occupied the whole flipping day to get that machine back up and running again as soon as you're going to upgrade from something like Windows 8.1 to 10 or from Windows 10 to Windows 11 you'll find that certain things will cease to work on that machine certain applications certain softwares especially things like the antivirus it is extremely common for the antivirus to stop working and what I would normally have to go and do to get the antivirus to work again is I literally just go and uninstall it and I can reinstall you can even use the exact same setup file to go and reinstall it and it'll work perfectly fine again it is the wheel biggest thing but it does happen so what you want to go and do is you're gonna have to go an inventory all the applications in your environment especially guys if you plan on doing this for more than one computer so if there's multiple laptops and day stops for multiple people that you plan on deploying to or do you plan on upgrading let's say you plan on upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 which is most likely what you guys are going to be doing I very very much encourage you guys to go and do an inventory of all the general applications that these people have so if they all have let's say an antivirus installed go and check do they have one installed if so what is the antivirus do they have Adobe Reader installed do they have this installed do they have that installed make a list of what they've got installed now if you want I suppose you can go and do this manually but that's not the way we normally do it normally we use some sort of analytics to go and get these reports there's many ways you guys can go about it Microsoft offers several tools to perform asset inventory such as endpoint manager and the desktop analytics solution called compatibility assessment there is many other tools from Microsoft and even third parties you can go make use of that will show you very accurately what kinds of software you're dealing with in your environment and that's always going to help you plan better with regards to compatibility other interesting things you guys need to keep in mind which is not really really what we've got in mind here but I just want to mention it if you were to go and do an update not an upgrade update you know Windows updates those don't normally cause compatibility issues but it's not unheard of to have compatibility issues with that as well so if God forbid you were to go and do a huge fat update especially those big feature updates Microsoft talks about that comes out once every six months or so be careful guys there is a small chance that some of those updates might cause issues so that is one of the reasons why we go and do those pilot programs I spoke of earlier so whether we're deploying a software a hardware an update or a driver whatever it is a good idea always to go and deploy it to a group of pilot users five people 10 20 people tested out for about 10 days 30 days you know you can choose the period and uh if nothing seems out of the ordinary if you're happy with the results then only then do you deploy that update to the rest of your company all right then we've got here application packaging so application packaging and automated installation generally involves using silent installation commands from vendors so yeah you can find these commands installation guides on internet forums you can go to Reddit GitHub technit there is many internet forms websites where you guys can go and find this or you can find this by launching the setup application with the forward slash help or forward slash question mark command line options so I'm going to say it again you type in forward slash help or you can go type in forward slash question mark so but this does not work for you know in-house applications so this is for those vendor applications we've got an in-house developer guys new that's not gonna work unless your developer specifically went and put that in place of course all right and then we've got application life cycle support as we know everything has got a life cycle you know people animals applications because everything so we had a little bit of a diagram we went through earlier where we showed you guys where we go and procure an application or whatever an event so we're gonna go on retarget application so whatever application you get at some point in time you're gonna have to retire it upgrade it replace it so if you look at something like a Microsoft store for business application I would say that is not the biggest headache I've had because that is an online store it's guaranteed safe and trusted and all that and since your machine is generally connected to the internet at least most people's machines are you will find your applications if you got them from the Microsoft store would normally be up to date they automatically update themselves where it became a bit of a snack for me personally is when that application itself not the updates but when the application itself needs to be replaced you know sometimes there's a newer application out from that vendor or for Microsoft then yeah you might have to go and step in here and you know intervene but the application itself you know assuming there's not a newer version available just the general updates day to day that you should be okay you know with from a Microsoft Store perspective you can if you want you can go and use something like Microsoft's endpoint manager which will show you the applications your people have on their devices what version edition they've got and if need be you can go and uninstall them and install a newer version or go and upgrade them believe it or not there's actually been cases where I would use this to degrade my people in companies well not my people it was their people this is normally a matter of I've done some sort of compliancy scan on the devices of the users and I found that they've got a program which they're allowed to have but they've got the wrong version the version they've got is version 11. I'm just making it up and we do not have a license yet or my client does not have a license yet for version 11. they have not acquired that or purchased version 11 licenses yet for the users they only have a license for version 10 the previous one so I can go and use this in point manager so you can degrade them to a lower version and eventually when the time comes when we got or when they get the license for the newer version I can go and upgrade them again something else to go and look at is maybe virtualization Solutions so if you want a newer version or an older version of application you can go look at virtualization Solutions or even remote Solutions remote app Remote Desktop but coming at us from a virtualizations perspective because that's what Microsoft mentions here they don't mention remote Solutions that's me adding that as an extra you can go make use of something like um application virtualization we call it app dash V for short which basically just stands for application virtualization all right folks moving on here we have plan or planning for operations and support so you'll notice you need to regularly replace desktop computers to keep up with software and Hardware developments however from their initial deployment until their retirement desktop computers like any other system need support the standard desktop computer replacement cycle is typically around about three maybe four years the release of a new Windows operating system version has often driven this schedule in the past you know back in the day when Microsoft actually still released operating systems every two or three years and for quite a while now obviously we were stuck in Windows 10 and now finally we're back on Windows 11. but back in the day when Microsoft used to release an operating system around every three years or so that was one of the driving forces for when a company would normally go and upgrade their machines like I said in the previous topic normally it is easier and more convenient to go and upgrade both the hardware as well as the actual operating system and software at the same time I mean I'm not going to be the kind of technician that's going to go and upgrade your machine physically and then two two three months later after you go and upgrade your operating system again that's a lot of work that's unnecessary so why not wait a little bit longer two three months or six months longer until there's a new operating system out and then we're gonna have to go and upgrade anyway and when I do that I might as well go and do your desktop or laptop as well it just kind of makes more sense logically anyway so the following factors are essential to continuing life cycle support in your operation phase that'll be things like the facilities so if you look at things like facilities that's physically at your office not so much at your home but physically the office this is more in mind with the server room but it's not limited to server room the server room ideally needs to be a secure room that is locked we do not want just any Willy nalini's Uncle walking in there it needs to be a locked environment it needs to be a temperature controlled environment generally we strive for about a 50 humidity level in there you know it's it's okay if it's a little bit lower a little bit higher but we want about 50 humidity we do not want too much dust in there we do not want other things influencing or interfering there if you look at the normal building itself you also want to make sure there's no trip hazards same applies to the server room that kind of stuff so that's facilities you want to maybe also make sure on the facilities that you've got you know an uninterrupted power supply um I'm not talking about a UPS device I'm just mean you know you've got some sort of backup power like a generator perhaps so that if something happens that you've got some sort of backup power you know we cannot afford for servers to normally be offline we've also have computer security so this issue requires constant vigilance so not only do computers require protection from malware and external attacks but they are also valuable corporate resources that must be protected from theft misuse and misappropriation important computer security responsibilities include deploying anti-malware software now for those of you that don't know malware is not something specific it includes everything like viruses Trojans ransomware spyware adware and you know when I say anti-malware I'm not just talking about an antivirus I'm talking about anti-spam antivirus anti that it's security software so anyway responsibilities include deploying anti-malware performing software application and operating system updates monitoring the status and inventory of your systems there's all forms part of computer security you'll find it most medium to large size companies have got some sort of monitoring software running where they keep an eye on things so if something out of the ordinary happens gets deleted gets created or changes they will know about it some companies take it so far they even have one or two dedicated people just keeping an eye on the logs and analytics and that kinds of stuff anyway then we also have software updates so this is another constant component of computer support you must keep computers that are running Windows operating systems stable and secure by regularly updating them with the latest security updates and fixes now I always feel like I've got a chest pain when I say hey guys you have to have the latest winners updates because I'm one of the kinds of guys that don't always have the latest Windows updates I know they're important and I keep telling you guys they're very important but what I've noticed is sometimes these updates even though they fix a lot of issues they also cause a lot of issues at many of my clients Windows updates was sometimes the main cause so to get around that it is advised once again you've got a pilot program we can go and deploy these updates test them check if they behave the way they you know were intended if they don't if there's something you don't like about them then of course you don't deploy them or you skip that specific update so on my machines I try using them about to keep updates off and let's say on a Friday when I'm good and ready and I'm done with my work for the week then I will go and update my machine manually and I'm always going to do a system restore point before I do that and once I've updated if I don't see any Shenanigans going on on my machine then I will keep that update and I will go and turn off updates once again but all in all guys updates are very important for your windows for your security software and for quite a few other things as well they make your system more stable they make your system more secure and many many other things as well we've got data protection so this involves backing up user data and configuration data so some people think this is just backuping your data other thing people think this is maybe just actually protecting the data like you know with passwords or encryption stuff and actually both of them are great people so protecting protecting your data includes but it's not limited to backing it up one way or another it includes but it's not limited to you know securing it with encryption something like BitLocker would probably be a very good example of that folks we also have it Administration so it Administration is the day-to-day resource that users rely on to help keep their computer safe to answer any questions they might have and let's face it they're probably gonna have a million and one questions even though it is stuff they should know you know stuff they could have found on Google and to resolve their normal day-to-day computer related issues my mouse doesn't want to work my keyboard doesn't want to work I can't print this document you know sometimes it's serious issues that I don't mind but most of the time it's probably going to be some silly issue that they should have fixed themselves it might be a matter of the mouse is just not plugged in so that is all part of it Administration that a support phase of the life cycle includes providing training ID support and Hardware servicing consider the following factors when providing these activities factors like training for example this is potentially the most costly and the most time consuming component of the support phase in my opinion this activity includes both training the I.T staff that will be you guys and providing I.T labor required to develop and deliver end user training so there's going to be times you need to educate your users yes educate the users and I'm not saying they need to go and attend a fancy course like what you guys are doing right now I'm saying this is something simple like maybe inviting them to the boardroom during lunch time and saying hey guys we've got this new software called Microsoft teams or call this or call that we plan on deploying it this is what it is this is how you go and use it just based stuff or hey guys we're going to talk about Security today if you receive an email from someone you don't know don't open it if you see a link or an attachment an email that you were not expecting do not click it do not open it you know that kinds of training so we're not talking about anything fancy or complicated here so training is training your ID staff like us and you it's also said you can go and train the user once you know a little bit more and then also training includes you know preparing and learning lob apps which is basically short for line of business applications you're going to find that all technicians at all times need to familiarize themselves with new softwares new hardware it's probably one of the biggest inconveniences of being a technician there will never be a time where you will know everything there's always going to be some sort of new software out some sort of new hardware this can even be something as simple as just a new Switch you've never seen it you've never worked on it before and now you need to go and configure it now you have no idea how to go and do that I mean you might know switches but you've never dealt with that brand or that make or that model now you have to go and Google it and YouTube it and look for manuals or look for someone that knows that you can figure out how it works it is a real inconvenience it's something we all struggle with it's something we can all relate with and if you guys feel like telling a couple of War Stories your model welcome to drop that in the comment section down below tell me about a time where you had a new software or a new piece of Hardware that you've never seen before and how you managed to figure that out I would really love to hear your War Stories we all have a couple and I'm on on that note guys if you guys are still watching this video at this point in time remember to give the video a like if there's anything that you see in this module that you do not understand you are welcome to ask your questions down below try if possible to ask your questions in the comment section of the relevant module it doesn't you know you're going to confuse people if you ask questions about module one in the module 2 comment section or if you go watch the module 2 video and you ask your questions about module two in the comments section of module one that's just not cool man so if possible try to ask your questions in the relevant module comment section unless you've just got a genetic you know general question alternatively what you guys can go and do is in the video description way at the bottom literally like way way at the bottom you'll find there's a link to a Discord server that is my Discord server it's called free IT training you're welcome to join me there it's a community of people in it for the most part it's people studying something in it like this specific course and other courses from other vendors and there you can go and ask your questions so either myself or answer your questions there or other people on it will answer your question there so it's all free it's so we can help one another and if you happen to know the answer to a question that someone's asking you're obviously welcome to answer that question as well you know so at the end of the day it is so we can help one another anyway getting back to what we have in front of us guys we are still under the support phase so besides training we've got I.T support So this support is integrated throughout the Enterprise desktop lifecycle so this is probably going to be about three four years normally so most of the steps describe throughout this topic are part of the it support pretty much all of it so this component includes help desk on-site support you know that kind of stuff and then lastly guys here we've got something called servicing the hardware so just like anything in life when you go get yourself a car or a server or a computer or a whatever you're going to have to maintain it obviously servicing it so this involves things like fixing the desktop computers replacing failed or faulty components it's gonna happen it's completely random but it's gonna happen and of course you know managing things like warranty issues it also involves keeping and restocking adequate components and replacing systems shipping and you know all that kinds of jazz I think you guys get the idea all right let's move on to our next topic here plan or planning for upgrades and retirement so we all know we are gonna have to go and upgrade or Hardware's so this could be the actual devices that people are using laptops tablets phones desktops that kind of stuff it also includes servers and then from a software perspective you know we're gonna have to at some point in time upgrade the operating systems at some point in time we're gonna have to upgrade the softwares we use on these operating systems so everything at some point will reach an end of life or it's going to reach a point where we can no longer really use it then we're gonna have to go and upgrade of something newer and better so there's a couple of factors to consider in the upgrade phase once again facilities is one of them so if I would like to upgrade is my facilities going to be accommodating regarding that do I have enough room do I have enough power if I'm gonna go and put a lot of machines there do I have adequate bandwidth if these machines are going to be Wireless like laptops and tablets and phones do I have a wireless connection Wi-Fi in other words a hotspot that kind of stuff do we have a proper firewall do we have water do we have this do we have that facilities includes everything guys do we have desks and chairs for crying out loud for these folks because I need to sit somewhere right we also need to consider things like software upgrades so it's one thing to go and get an operating system or to get a certain type of software for my users but you need to keep in mind at some point in time this operating system or this software will reach its end of life and you will need to replace it how difficult would it be to replace or upgrade it or bring system or that software operating system-wise I would honestly say that's probably not going to be your biggest issue here because all companies deal with that specific problem it is the softwares I would say that you decide to use in your company some soft visual finder is not a newer version available well the newer version is not going to solve your problem so go and sit go and think about it have a discussion about it don't just go and choose any software because on that particular day it's the cheapest or whatever that might have consequences for you to later down the line other things to consider in the upgrade phase would be things like computer transfer to new users so what some companies were gonna do is instead of just getting rid of old computers if someone's been with the company for let's say two years or five years when they're due for an upgrade it will give that person a new laptop or a desktop but they will not necessarily dispose of the old laptop they took from that user they will take that old laptop and desktop and give it to the newbies any new employees in the company will get the old Hardware this does not happen in all companies but I have seen a tendency for some from some companies where they go and do this so when you do that when you transfer someone's old hand Downs to someone new or you know maybe it's just the person that's resigned to the company they got laid off they unfortunately passed away whatever the situation is you know whenever you find yourself in a situation where a computer that previously belonged to one user gets paused into another that poses a problem because it might have information that the new person should not see it might be for certain people's eyes only so you want to make sure that machine does not have that like potentially pose a huge new can of worms for you other factors just because there would be things like the retirement phase because let's face it it's going to happen it's inevitable people so during the retirement phase this would be things like the device disposal and resale preparation basically what I just said in the previous phase so at some point in time you are going to get rid of these devices so if you are going to hand them down to the next person or eventually once they hadn't been handed down whatever you're gonna dispose of these devices it's not as simple as hey let's go throw them on a trash people let's go and throw them in a bin uh no some of these devices are harmful to the environment and even more importantly well I suppose it depends how you look at it they have sensitive information on them especially on the hard drive folks so you want to make sure you destroy the hard drive I know of many many companies where they've got all computers they will go and donate these computers to a school a college or an orphanage or something like that but what they will do is they will not donate the machines with the original hard drives instead they will go and wipe the hard drive or they'll go destroy the hard drives and give new hard drives or just give them without any hard drives and tell this entity to go and buy their own hard drives now there are some companies out there that are so paranoid they will not go and even donate the machines without hard drive they'll just destroy everything the computers the hard drives everything gets disposed but if you are one of these companies or your client is one of these companies that would like to go and dispose of computers properly resell them there's a list of things you need to go through you want to make sure he's harder that's disposed of or at the very least that they've been wiped by an overwriting program or something in that matter administrative processing is another problem packaging and shipping mean how do you plan on actually getting these equipments this desktops laptops tablets phones whatever it is how do you plan on actually getting it to where it needs to be so if you decide hey I want to sell this to company X or hey I would like to donate this to company X or entity X how is it gonna get from point A to point B are you gonna go and use some sort of packaging and shipping who's going to be paying for that because they may or may not be additional costs involved here guys and then we've also got residual value something to go and consider lastly guys factors to consider is also things like BYOD so you would remember we said this quite a few times before BYOD is bring your own device to work so someone has bought their own laptop tablet or whatever for the purposes of work but remains their property they can use this for their own game so they can go to an illegal website at home and go and download pirate movies and games and stuff and when they come back to the office that device might now be infected and now they're gonna go and spread that malware onto your company environment so it's got benefits it's got drawbacks anyway that's not the actual topic here so when it comes to BYOD scenarios if these people leave your company one day a concern that people normally have here is that person may or may not have sensitive information on that device now I can't tell them to hand in the device because well it belongs to them it's their property but what we could gonna do is we can go and remote wipe that device one way we do that is to go and use in tune in tune does allow us to go on remote wipe devices the catch is these devices needs to be enrolled into my company's in-tune environment they have to be on a network of sorts so this has to be on a mobile network or a Wi-Fi connection slash hotspot if it's not it's not gonna going to be able to receive the instruction from me that says wipe yourself now if you are about to say hey I'm gonna sue my company if they wipe my device uh no you're not because you've agreed to it it's usually not a piece of paper you've signed although it might be it's normally a digital agreement you've agreed to you just don't know you've agreed to it so if you go check things like adding your work email to your device Microsoft teams to your device that kind of stuff you'll see that you actually are agreeing the next time you go there and you add that stuff look through those terms and conditions the stuff that we normally always just accept but never actually read in there you agree to them remote wiping your device if they deem it necessary most companies won't go that drastic but you know it's always a threat so yeah also support for removing organizational applications and data so once again engine can also go and do that it can go and wipe your organizations there and stuff all right folks we have finally reached the end of the first section there is four sections the good news is I'm fairly certain that the first section is the biggest and the longest one out of the lot the other three remaining sections should be a heck of a lot quicker than the first one a lot shorter a lot quicker so yeah that's the good news so moving on to our second main sections module that was explore Windows Editions in this second main section of the module we're going to have three main things we're going to talk about I suppose you can think of these three things as three subsections within this section here are the three things we're going to focus on the first is examine here we're going to look at different editions of Windows and their capabilities Within These Editions what the different editions do and what they don't do that types of stuff the second subsection if you will will be select here we'll do a short discussion on which Edition you should choose since we're obviously at this point in time will have an idea what the different editions are and their capabilities are the third subsection if you will will once again be examined but this time will be coming at it from a different perspective this time it'll be from a hardware perspective so in a nutshell this would be you know to make sure you've got enough resources or the right resources to run the right version of Windows Edition that types of stuff all right now that we did no more or less what these three sub sections are if you want to call them that the first one was examine so where we basically just look at different editions and vacuum abilities so let's do that first all right so when it comes to available Windows editions here is a nice table for you guys with the different editions of Windows 10 and the different editions of Windows 11 we get feel free to pause the video at this point if you want to read from the table or if you need to read from the table we are going to go through it very slowly though if we look at this list starting from the very very top we have the Edition called home it's one of the most common additions out there which I'm sure you've all heard of at some point in time this Edition is for the average Joe at home it's a consumer oriented desktop edition of Windows it doesn't have that many functions or features but it does have enough however for the average person at home to do things like gaming and their basic office work you know from day to day so it should be okay for the average person at home let's put it that way second on the list from the top we have the Edition called Pro the Pro Edition Builds on the features of the home edition so in other words we're just adding on to that with many extra features to meet the needs of a small or a medium-sized business so the Pro Edition this is suitable for you know more advanced users who want benefits like things like uh BitLocker drive encryption maybe hyperv virtualization if you want to go and create virtual machines uh many many other benefits as well now the Pro Edition comes with way too many benefits for me to mention here but some of the most popular well-known ones would be ones that I just mentioned obviously to you other things might be if I have to find a second I'm trying to remember what they are things like the Microsoft store for business remote desktop group policy management and of course the ability to go and join Azure active directory those are only some of the benefits you give the Pro Edition so there's way way more than that guys you can go and Google it now moving down the list to the third one which is called Pro for workstations this is basically the same as Pro it's just we're adding on to the pro so this Edition offers very much the same features as the normal Pro Edition that we just discussed but it does however also include additional features intended for workloads that require higher performance and resilience so on that note since we're talking about resilience it also includes features like for example refs if you don't know what that is that is a type of file system so just like you get the NTFS file system yes you actually get a file system called the refs file system this addition of Windows also includes other things like persistent memory so that would be you know for example support for non-volatile memory modules that kinds of jazz now going further down this list to number four the Enterprise Edition this Edition also Builds on the features of the normal Pro Edition but instead with additional features that meet the needs of large Enterprises which is why well it has the name called Enterprise when the sixth one on the list that will be Enterprise LT SC the LT SC for those of you who don't know stands for long term servicing channel so this is a special edition of Enterprise that will not update with any new features there are companies out there and there are certain pieces out there or situations out there where we absolutely do not want or can not afford for a computer to go and update so if you or a client have a machine or an environment where you don't want the machine to update for whatever reason this might be one solution to that problem a common example of a PC where you might not want it to go and update or we want to go and use this type of operating system with maybe be a PC like in a medical environment or an industrial environment I mean these are usually closed systems where you can not afford for that system to crash because of some update it took place which was not compatible or some update took place another machine got compromised we cannot afford for that so if this is a machine like in a hospital yeah we do not want those machines just updating every day maybe it's in the middle of something important now suddenly this machine wants to go on update can you imagine no we don't want that now moving further down our list here to Pro education and the other one called education So Pro education and education offer the same features as Pro and Enterprise editions respectively except for long-term servicing Channel these editions of Windows have configurations which are obviously more suitable for you know School staff administrators teachers and of course students something important to note here folks though is these licenses you know for pro-education and education were unfortunately only available through academic volume licensing all right and then the last one on our list here folks iot yes I can see it says core slash Enterprise that's the different sub sections if you want to call it that or sub editions but we're specifically focusing on the iot so for those of you that don't know yet iot is short for Internet of Things there are many places in our lives these days where you'll find these operating systems they're everywhere they're all around us we just don't realize it and we just don't know it at least most people don't so iot is an addition of Windows which is designed for fixed purpose devices a couple examples if I have to farm soccer will probably be something like an ATM a point of sales terminal industrial medical devices I hope you folks get the idea here so the next time you go to something like a bank ATM to withdraw some money I want you to think about what I just said here that operating system on that ATM is most likely an iot folks all right and then moving on here we have exploring Windows form factor options so if you need to go and choose a Windows for your machine you need to go look at form factors what do you plan on installing this windows on so if I plan on installing this Windows onto an ATM I'm going to use that because it was a bit extreme then you might want to consider an iot obviously so a form factor is aha this is an ATM or aha this is a you know I don't know a point of sale system so that's my form factor or this is a normal desktop in front of someone in the office or this is a laptop or it's a tablet or it's a phone so what exactly is your form fact that you're dealing with here that will have an influence on the Windows Edition you choose are you dealing with 32-bit or 64-bit architectures now fortunately for us the majority of people and things these days you 64-bit and a lot of these operating systems only come out up in 64-bit so that kind of solves that problem for us and then once again a scenario what do you intend on actually using this machine Force never mind the form factor or the architecture all that blah blah what do you plan on using this machine for I plan on using it for gaming I plan on using it only for gaming then you know what just get yourself a home edition you don't need all those other fancy functions and features you only plan on doing gaming with it or you might say you know what I plan on using this machine for office work but just basic office work then you might also get away of Home Edition maybe you need to go to Pro but home edition is probably going to cut a few but if you say you know what I need to do office work but I need to be able to create virtual machines or I need to be able to encrypt my data because it's very sensitive and I cannot afford for it to land the wrong hands then you might not need to start looking at operating systems like a pro Edition so these will be examples of scenarios all right folks and then here we've got examining your windows Hardware requirements so before you go ahead and just randomly choose an operating system for yourself or a user or a client you need to go look at Hardware requirements do these people have the right Harvest if they have an actual desktop or laptop tablet phone or whatever they're going to impose operations them on go look at if that machine actually needs the minimum hard requirements it might not meet the minimum requirements or it might not even have the requirements to begin with so when it comes to operating system requirements let's look at something like Windows 10 so you need to go look at do you or the user or the client have enough RAM for example do they have a fast enough CPU do they have enough hard drive space on that device that kind of stuff if you look at something like Windows 11 it's for the most part the same but what a lot of people don't know is when it's 11 it's got a couple of extra requirements so for many moons if you look at Windows 7 all the way to Windows 10 it's been pretty much the same order requirements for the most part but Windows 11 it's a different kind of worms it's got other weird requirements like TP em the device needs to have an actual TPM on the motherboard so for those of you that don't know TPM is short for trusted platform module it's an actual chip on the motherboard that does encryption most commonly we would normally use this for BitLocker but now it seems we need to have it also for Windows 11 has to be version 2. so I probably am going to for you know too far of this I don't have to mention that much detail but it's basically what we've got in mind here now still in the category of operating system requirements you also need to go look at things like feature specific requirements so if you or the user needs certain features like hyper-v bad locker since we just mentioned TPM you're gonna have to make sure that machine has certain features does it have the ability to go do virtualization does it have a TPM chip to go and do the BitLocker encryption that types of stuff you need to go and look at things like device drivers so if you or the user are going to need certain weird devices a microphone a very weird microphone I don't know why I'm saying microphone I think it's because I'm making a YouTube video and I'm seeing a mic in front of me so it just kind of came to mind to view all the users got some sort of weird device does that device need drivers how will they get these flipping drivers also check for hyper-v compatibility because let's face it everyone and everything does stuff remotely in virtually these days so there's a bit of a picture for you guys you know more or less what would look like when it comes to checking hyper-v requirements um in the old days we're going to the BIOS nobody goes into the BIOS these days all machines have got a UV but we would essentially go into the BIOS make sure virtualization is turned on if it had the ability to go and do virtualization nowadays all motherboards and CPUs do virtualization and it's always turned on by default was not always the case though folks once most certainly not always the case all right so that brings us to the end of the second main sections module was definitely a lot shorter than the first one once again I'm going to remind you guys if you haven't done the already please give the video a like it does help me out I mean look at how long this video is I'm really putting in a lot of effort to get you guys this information and to get you guys to be able to pass these exams good news is the scores only has one exam so that's the good news so what is the third section folks that is the explore Azure active directory now considering what this topic is about I think it's probably going to be best if I at some point in this section go to the actual Azure portal and actually go into the user active directory and I show you guys a little bit around you know a little bit of a tour if you will you know people do learn in different ways some people learn by seeing some learn by listening some learn by doing you know that kind of stuff so it's probably going to be best if I at the very least just give you guys a little bit of a tour it's not actually part of that course but you know what why not let's go and do it so before we do a little tour you can use Azure active directory to do some of the following so this is what uh Microsoft says so the list I'm about to give you guys is what Microsoft says please keep in mind the list I'm about to give you guys is not the full list the amount of things you can go and use is your active directory for guys is insane this if I had to go make a list we would probably never finish there it's just crazy but nonetheless let me give you guys the list that is given by Microsoft themselves so the first is to go and configure access to Applications so since Azure ad is an actual active directory you can go and use it if it's used correctly to go and control the axis your people have your clients have your guests have your customers and Consultants all that have two applications you can go on users or active directory to go and configure things like SSO out of a single sign-on to your cloud-based applications you know running in a web browser you can go and use this with active did you go and manage your users and groups which I think is probably the one of the most obvious things you can go and use Azure ID to go and provision users so instead of making your user accounts on premise as the old school where you can actually go and make them in a cloud and they'll synchronize back down to on-premises if need be you can go and create them the old school way on premises and they'll synchronize into the cloud assuming of course you or your company have what we call a hybrid active detective environment that means you've got an active detect in a cloud and one on premises and you are synchronizing the two of one another other things you can go and use Azure ID for is enabling Federation between organizations we're seeing less and less of that these days you can go and use it to provide an identity management solution because as your ID is probably one of the biggest identity Management Solutions that an on-premises active directory you can use Azure ad to identify irregular sign-in activities quite frankly I would be surprised if it could not do that almost everything and anything in Microsoft these days especially in the cloud has got logs and analytics and you know some sort of monitoring that will allow you to keep an eye on whatever is going on Azure ID also allows you to go and configure MFA in other words multi-factor of indication where people have to prove in more than one way they are who they claim to be or where something has to claim or prove that they are what they claim to be and then lastly Azure ID can also go and extend existing on-prem's active directory implementation to Azure ID basically what I said earlier a hybrid active directory environment so that is the list given by the course itself but like I said there is many many other things you can go and use as your ID for there's many other things you can go and do on Azure ID but let me give you guys a very quick basic tour of these were active directors you guys can have a bit of a ballpark idea as to what you're in for so I've got a browser up in the background I'm already logged into this report let me switch over a few moments later alright folks here we are in a browser of sorts and I am currently logged in to the Microsoft Azure portal all right so we need to get to the Azure active directory there is many ways you can get to any component on visual portal so the first way and probably the easiest way for most folks will be to go to the top to this little search bar whatever component you're looking for you just type it in there you can think of this as a life jacket of sorts whenever you don't know where something is or Microsoft decided to move it or rename it because I do that a lot you just type in the name at the top and it will allow you to get to the component without knowing where it is so if I go there you can see mine already pops up because I searched for it recently but I can just go and type something in like so active directory you can see I'm not even done typing it it already starts popping up of a couple of suggestions on what things I might be looking for there's the one I'm looking for you can go click on it there alternatively you can go to your services all services here give it a moment there it is another way would be to click here and then on this little menu this is called your navigation menu on the Azure portal many moons ago this used to be called the Hub I don't know why they decided to change the name but in the navigation menu we will notice there is the Azure active directory as well bottom left now what we see in this navigation menu is absolutely not what the Azure portal is limited to it just shows you some of the most common functions and features the average Joe like me and you would need or want but in no way is this a reflection of the limitations of the Azure portal so if you don't count this it's probably like between 10 and 30 items here but if you were to go to all services or create a resource if you were to go on a search you'd find there is thousands of functions and features and benefits on the Azure portal unfortunately this is not an Azure course per se this is more about other objects and the goal for us here on the portal right now is to go specifically to the Azure active directory so I'm going to click on that here we go how you get here that's up to you guys there's many ways like I just said now what we see here on the left hand side this folks is a blade it is not a navigation menu that there this is a navigation menu this is a blade so whenever you open a component on Azure portal in this case I've opened user active directory it will give you a blade with a couple of options depending on which option you click on here it might open another blade next to it and in that blade depending on the option you click on it might open another blade and another blade and another blade you can think of this as going into a folder on your computer or your server sometimes that folder will have subfolders sometimes that subfolder will have Sub sub folders so it's kind of like going in deeper and deeper and deeper into folders the blades work in the same manner at some point you'll even have a scroll bar at the bottom to scroll between these blades all right so within this blade here are some of the options you've got available I'm saying it like that because this is not everything a lot of these options if you were to go and click on them you'll see Sub sub options too to give you an idea if I were to go down here to for example security I click on security this whole blade just changed so instead of opening a second blade next to it the whole blade changed look at how many other options I'm getting here which is just in the security section and depending on what I click on here you'll go even deeper and even deeper and even deeper so every day you will have no idea how big is what is it is mind-boggling how big this platform is so I'm going to go back a little bit here there we have users and groups which is the one of the some of the most common components you're gonna be looking for most of the time and we are going to come back here in section four which is going to follow this where we're gonna have to go create users and groups so if I click on users use this on group spider where I used to be one tab up until about three five years ago now it's no longer just one tab here I've got a whole bunch of user accounts with Microsoft likes creating I didn't make these ones Microsoft loves creating these user accounts if you would like to go and create a user account assuming of course you've got privilege to do so you can do that by clicking here where it says new and this menu used to change they used to send user they used to want to be one here that says new live user or guest user now if you click on it it's now Sub menu so I can go and create a new user that's like a normal active directory User it's just being created by the cloud if you were to go click on that option there that is to create someone or invite someone should I say from outside your company usually someone that does not work for your company this can be like a contractor or a consultant you do not want to go and create them a full-blown full-fledged active directory account you know for security concerns and all that so instead we invite them using their Live ID now nine out of 10 companies are using 365 email addresses and those are actually in fact seen as Live IDs so 90 of the time you can actually just invite them with their work email address which is probably going to be a Live ID but should they be the 10 of people that don't actually have 365 which is which would be weird in my opinion if I can just go to www.live.com create themselves a new Live ID if they don't have a personal one yet and you can invite them on that email address so that would be an at outlook.com or at live.com or at hotmail.com email address me in the day yes that is what it looks like when you create users here you can go and assign them privilege change probably it's remove privilege you can go on assign or remove or change licenses passwords you name it the amount of things you've got access to here folks is mind-boggling let me click on Alexia just to show you guys it's still not going to show us everything there's a couple of things you guys can go and play with me look at that sign in logs audit logs you can go and change some of the roles you can go and add this person to a group if he or she is in one or not in one at any point in time you can go and add them remove them or change them in groups licensing things you can go and change devices and the list goes on going back let's go have a little peek at groups give it a moment I should probably go back one more here we go groups I'm gonna go click on that give it a moment the portal is a little bit slow that's not my PC or my Internet it's just a bit slow to portal sometimes here's a whole bunch of groups I made these groups you know earlier today for something else normally you would see no groups in the beginning unless this is for an existing company or if you were fooling around like me you can go here and you can go click on new group and that's ultimately where you'll be able to create your new groups so you can go and add users into the groups via clicking on the group here you can go to users themselves you can add them to group there any point in time you can add people or remove people you know from a group if need be so now here you can go make groups expire so in other words they're going to go and order delete at some point in time this is ideal for projects and stuff that you you know want them to go and clear themselves up you don't want a lot of clutter in your environment you want to do a little housekeeping spring cleaning if you will so if you want your stuff to go Auto delete themselves you can go to expiration if you want to prevent your people your environment from using certain names for groups or teams or whatever you can go there you can go down at the CSV file you can go and populate with all the names that's no-nos and you can go and re-upload that little CSV file of all the names and then people will not be able to go and use those names for for you know groups and all that kind of stuff the minor options guys is really endless I wish this wasn't Azure course because then I could really go all out but unfortunately it is not in as well course this course focuses more on the managing your devices and users from an Enterprise perspective I would have liked if this course focused more on the client side of things as well because like I said the beginning of this module a lot of folks watching this video might not have experience yet when it comes to just managing normal client devices your day-to-day things like installing Windows using administrative tools that kind of stuff so this course is more intended for managing large groups of people and large groups of devices when you already have the experience when it comes to the normal operating systems and all that kinds of stuff all right so let's go quickly back to the presentation most likely for the last time and see what's up next right folks here we are the next topic is the next sections we actually just finished section three which is also very very quick I told you guys section one is probably going to be the longest and the slowest so section three was a quick short one and section four even more so which is this one section four is manage identities in Azure active directory so we're not going to do anything too complicated yet I mean this is module one after all the more complicated stuff is still coming up in the remaining seven modules of this course so for those of you that don't know this course consists of eight modules each will have its own dedicated video so the race is going to come up in the next modules so we're gonna go quickly back to my browser back to the Azure portal and we're gonna go and do a couple of basic tasks like creating user accounts and groups and stuff and then we're gonna come back to this presentation one last time so switching back over to the browser a few moments later back we are okay so how do we get to Azure active directory you would remember I went to the navigation menu previously and I clicked there it's not the only way to get the job done though so I'm gonna go click on this reactive directory we are going to go and attempt to create ourselves a user account now they are continuously changing the Azure portal of all forms of cloud where we're talking about Microsoft 365 or Azure it is continuously changing the environment the cloud is very rapidly changing so if I show you guys today where a certain button is on the Azure portal or one of the Microsoft hd5 portals it might be there today but next week it might not be there because they've renamed it deleted it added something new it is constantly changing so it's very important it is vital you guys keep practicing this stuff and you keep playing with it it doesn't help you guys watch this video course of mine and then only after three months or six months you actually go and try and apply this knowledge by then some of the stuff would have moved some of the stuff looks different or they've been renamed it happens especially on the Azure side 365 not as rapidly but on the Azure portal it changes a lot anyway getting deck 2D uses I'm going to click on that there we go let's go and create a user so we've got a couple here already I'm gonna go and click on new user I'm going to create a normal user in the active directory in the cloud see here we're going to go and specify what he or she will log in with in the morning so we're going to go and user names let's go and say John it's a bad idea just to use someone's name or just a last name the chances are you're most likely going to have a conflict there's probably going to be someone else of that name or that last name so it'd probably be a better idea to use a combination of a user's name and last name maybe their full name and last name some companies will use the employees employee number that's not always a good idea most people don't even know their own ID number or social security number now you want to go and use an employee number it's not going to end well folks so I'm going to pretend this person is called Smith John Smith you know it sounds like James Bond what will he or she be displayed as on all the environments so this will be things like Exchange in other words email SharePoint OneDrive Microsoft teams whatever what will they be displayed as so let's just keep it something simple John Smurf there we go and password now I don't recommend choosing one because normally the first time this person logs in who is called John in this case the first time to log in they're going to use this password whether you chose one or where the generated one but only the first time they will be prompted to go and change their password the first time they log in so you know what's the point of choosing a password then I would say just let it generate one you know I'm gonna Auto generate one give it to the user or you know mail it to their manager or whatever you know once they've logged in they can go and choose their own password of course so up until not too long ago literally as recently as a couple of months ago all the options for creating a user would be on the same page you'd have to scroll down and scroll down and scroll scroll scroll scroll now I see Microsoft has made it shorter page and instead they've added a bunch of tabs and even if added into different tabs it still does not look the same it looks different so it's subdivided and it looks different by the time you guys go and do this so if you watch this video maybe it's three months after it got uploaded or 12 months after they got uploaded you might find it might look slightly different than what you see in front of you so you're gonna have to configure out the difference this is going to be a constant thing guys in 90 you're constantly gonna have to go and figure this out but if you watch the video you should still get the general idea as to how this works we're going to look on the properties you can specify the person's actual name now actual last name if need B you can go and add a couple extra informations here about this person I'm not going to worry about that at this point in time assignments here I can go and add the person to a group if I would like to add him or her to a group at this point you can always do it later you can go and give this person a role if need be so that would be privilege folks he or she is just a user in the beginning they cannot do anything they cannot change anything they cannot delete anything they can do zip squat nothing so you need to go and assign them some sort of privilege some sort of admin role if you want to call it that I'm going to click on that there used to not be menu so if you go back up until let's say 2016 2017 there used to be only like five different options you're going to choose from now look at this list it is insane people it's insane these are not radio buttons these are check boxes which means you can choose more than one so if he or she needs to be able to do more than one thing then you can go and tick all the relevant boxes here giving them the necessary permissions to go and Achieve that task or that goal remember in it you never give someone or something more privileged than what they need to achieve a task or a goal does even include yourself it's not just because we don't trust people I mean that's one of the reasons I suppose but it's also in the event of that account getting compromised which is why I'm saying it also includes you so it's not if but when your account gets compromised it's going to happen people anything can be hacked so it's going to happen and if it happens or when it happens we want to limit the amount of damage that perpetrator can do with that account we want to limit the damage they can do we want to limit the information they can access and if this happens to be your employee maybe they're going rogue or something we want to limit the amount of damage they can do and information they can access so it's a form of I suppose damage control if you will so do not give more permission than what someone needs very important guys look for the list look for the the role is relevant to that person assign it and multiple roles and there you go right so I think that is it review and create I'm happy chappy I'm gonna go click on create it takes normally about one to five seconds done easy peasy that was very quick now when it comes to groups let's go back I'm gonna go back here Oh wrong way it's probably going to be quicker for me to do it this way I'm taking a bit of a shortcut here I'm gonna go to groups there we go new group there's different types of groups you can go and create if this page eventually loads I'm going to keep it to a normal 365 group give the group a name so if I'm creating a group for let's say a department maybe this is the sales department I can go and say sales department there we go oh my spelling is terrible today focus focus focus here we go okay there we go I'm not going to worry about any of the rest of the stuff here for now if need be you can go and add owners or members at this point in time while creating said group or you can always go and add them afterwards anything can be done afterwards create give it a moment and there we go folks very straightforward very very easy all right so let's quickly go back to our presentation for the last time all right folks so that effectively concludes the last section in this module and um before you guys disappear on me guys don't disappear yet if you've enjoyed this course if you've liked it if you feel you've learned something give the video a like if you'd like to know when module 2 comes out or any of my other courses remember to subscribe otherwise you're not gonna know and then I also want to give a shout out and a thank you to all of you guys that's been sponsoring the channel so much thank you very much guys thank you to the patreon sponsors there's quite a lot of you guys actually have to start splitting it because there's too many of you guys now so thank you to all the patreon sponsors there is a list of all the PayPal sponsors so thank you to all of you guys I also want to give a shout out to those of you that's been clicking on the thanks button below the video sponsoring me that way for those of you that's buying been buying me a coffee or a milkshake thank you to those of you as well I appreciate all of you guys um just reminded guys there is a Discord server so if you have any questions you can post in the comment section down below or you can join the Discord server in the video description and there you can also go and post a couple of questions um there's a secret phrase I'm going to give you guys in this video it's literally the very very last part of this video The Secret phrase for this video is I talk to sheep so normally I put it like somewhere in the middle of a module and I will do that with the other modules there's always a secret phrase in these modules you've got to watch the whole module to know where the phrase is and what the phrase is so besides posting your questions in the comment section down below or you know asking whatever you can post the secret phrase down in the comment section or you can go and rephrase my secret phrase to a certain extent this is just for fun it's just for gags so for anyone that did not actually watch the full video the full module they'll have no idea what the heck you're talking about so it's just for fun so feel free to go and post in the comment section down below I talked to sheep or anything regarding I talk to sheep and if you would like to be creative and make your own secret sentence because I'm running out of secret sentence here you can join my Discord server um very open to suggestions you guys can give me a couple of suggestions on what I might use in the next module as a secret phrase so yeah that is the secret phrase guys thank you very much for watching this video um if you would like to sponsor me or this channel you can find all of the information in the video description down below right folks talk to you in module 2 of the Microsoft MD 102 course Hallelujah [Music]