The native application approval functionality within Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, (which is still often referred to as SCCM, ConfigMgr, and Configuration Manager) originally only allowed defined admins to approve application requests from the Application Catalog and Software Center using the ConfigMgr administrator console. Starting with ConfigMgr 1810, you could also begin making pre-approved machine based requests with no user required, allowing you to install applications in real-time. Additionally, e-mails could be sent to a defined approver, or a list of approvers for each application that is deployed by entering e-mail addresses of each approver(s) into each application deployment at deployment type. This feature is coming along nicely. One thing that I often hear from customers regularly is “I want to have my users’ managers approve the applications, since they are going to ultimately be the ones responsible for covering the additional licensing costs out of their cost center.” Unfortunately, since you can only set one or more static e-mail address or DLs on each application deployment, this isn’t really possible today without having someone receive the e-mails, look up the requester’s manager, and manually forwarding them the ConfigMgr generated approval e-mail. This isn’t a very productive use of anyone’s time IMHO. As many of you know, I’ve been diving head-first into any and every chance to create PowerApps and Power Automate (Flows) to harness the power of these ultra powerful low-code/no-code application creation platforms. This small gap in ConfigMgr led me to come up with the following idea which may suit the need for many who are waiting for the application approval functionality in the ConfigMgr product to further mature. First, I had my customer make and choose an “Application approval” e-mail account to use. All applications requiring approval would be set to automatically e-mail this mailbox any time an...
PowerApps Flow ConfigMgr Integration
-
-
September 28, 2019There are administrative activities that take place in every ConfigMgr/SCCM hierarchy that would be nice to be able to add some safety pre-checks before ConfigMgr takes off and does its thing. In the example I’m going to cover within, the scenario revolves around wanting to be notified when my ConfigMgr Automatic Deployment Rule (ADR) runs its usual scheduled download, distribution, and deployment process. I didn’t only want to know what is actually about to be deployed to my clients, but I want to know what the maximum runtimes are for each update, the start time and deadline of the deployment, some basic info about each update including a link to view more details and check for known issues, and any other interesting information you might want to include. You could opt to only be notified of the new software updates using status filter rules to run a script which sends an e-mail from within the script. I decided to leverage Microsoft Flow’s native Send Email capability to handle the notification e-mail. One great thing many don’t realize is that a free Flow plan is included with every Office 365 tenant. Once you realize all of the automation capabilities that Flow has, you’ll probably soon realize it’s worth bumping up to Flow Plan 1 so you can begin taking advantage of the Flow Gateway. Fortunately, it’s a great deal @ $15/user per month (with no limit to the number of Flows each user can create), or a per Flow plan starting at $500/month for up to 5 Flows. For more details on Flow and it’s pricing, click here. What if you want to take it to the next level, and not only be notified of the updates, but also click a link within the e-mail which allows you to review details...