Recently a customer using Microsoft Intune requested to deploy a TrueType font required by one of their line of business apps. Because Intune does not offer a native solution to deploy fonts it was quite clear that a PowerShell script or Intune Win32 app should do the trick. Note that the mentioned PowerShell scripts can also be used for app deployments with Configuration Manager (MEMCM).
How to install a font programmatically? # There seem to be multiple options depending on the operating system version. I’ve tested this with Windows 10 1909. And broke it down to the following steps:
Copy the font to the “C:\Windows\Fonts” folder Create a registry key which points to the filename of the *.ttf or *.otf font copied to the Windows font path How to install a font with Intune? # To get the font to Windows 10 devices I created a PowerShell script which copies the font files to the windows-fonts folder and creates the required registry key.
Deploying the PowerShell script as Intune Win32 app has the advantage that we can link the font as a dependency if any app requires a specific font. Additionally we can detect and uninstall the font if needed.
I’m thrilled to introduce the intune-drive-mapping-generator which creates PowerShell scripts to map network drives with Intune. The tool is open source and built on ASP.NET Core MVC.
The intune-drive-mapping-generator is your tool of choice to:
Generate an Intune PowerShell script to map network drives on Azure AD joined devices Seamlessly migrate existing network drive mapping group policies Generate a network drive mapping configuration from scratch Use an existing Active Directory group as a filter to deploy all your drive mapping configurations within one script This all happens without scripting effort. You receive a fully functional PowerShell script for the deployment with Intune.
Architecture # This tool is designed to work best with the following components although it can be useful for other purposes(?) :
Azure AD Joined and Intune enrolled Windows 10 devices Synced user account from Active Directory to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD Connect) On-premises file servers Howto # Export existing group policy # To convert your existing drive mapping group policy configuration, save the GPO as XML report with the group policy management console.
Why want you to create desktop shortcuts with Intune? Business specific apps may require special shortcuts in order to launch the application with the right parameters. Or you need to create a shortcut for an application which is stored on your on premises fileserver. For this purpose I created a little solution which closes the gap between the modern cloud and on premises world. In comparison with other solutions this one works if you have redirected the users desktop with OneDrive Known Folder Move and automatically remediates missing shortcuts if they got deleted.
Direct link to the GitHub repository.
Browser links: Instead of placing shortcuts to websites on the desktop I would recommend you to use managed bookmarks which can be directly provisioned within the web browser. I documented this for the new Microsoft Edge based on chromium here. {: .notice}
Features # This solution works when the desktop is redirected with OneDrive Known Folder Move Everything is user based (local userprofile) If the shortcut is missing or deleted it gets automatically (re)created Possibility to remove shortcut via Intune Win32 app uninstall Shortcut can point to: URL, File (UNC) or Folder (UNC) Ability to pass shortcut arguments Ability to specify shortcut icon (UNC/URL) Ability to deploy shortcut together with an app using Intune Win32 app dependencies Architecture # A simple PowerShell script which does all the shortcut stuff is wrapped as Intune Win32 App. This adds possibility to detect the presence of the shortcut and if required to uninstall it with Intune. In order to work with the redirected desktop to OneDrive with Known Folder Move we can take advantage of the [Environment]::GetFolderPath("Desktop") method to resolve the desktop location. Based on the Win32 app configuration the shortut get’s either created on the users personal desktop or on the allusers desktop.