Windows 10: Microsoft announces general availability of Desktop Analytics

Brink · Oct 16, 2019

Today, we’re thrilled to announce the general availability of Desktop Analytics—the cloud-connected service that integrates with System Center Configuration Manager to help IT professionals take a data-driven approach to their management of Windows endpoints. Since announcing public preview in July, thousands of organizations have already benefited from the intelligence and insights generated by millions of enrolled endpoints. We’ve been hard at work delivering new features and improvements that address your feedback on the service.

Gain insight and intelligence with Desktop Analytics

The purpose of Desktop Analytics is simple: To provide insight and intelligence you can use to make informed decisions about the update readiness of your Windows endpoints. By combining the data specific to your organization with aggregated insights from the millions of Windows devices connected to Microsoft’s cloud services, you can do some remarkable things:

Get a comprehensive view into the endpoints, applications, and drivers under management in your ecosystem.

Assess application and driver compatibility with the latest Windows feature updates and receive mitigation recommendations for known issues, as well as advanced insights for line of business apps.

Optimize the set of pilot devices that adequately represents your overall estate using the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Microsoft cloud.

What’s new in Desktop Analytics

Since announcing the public preview of Desktop Analytics, we made a point to deliver new features on a regular basis. For example, in August we helped streamline the workflow by eliminating the need to manually evaluate applications (such as system components published by Microsoft) that are known to be compatible with new feature updates. Then, in September, we delivered on one of our most requested features: The ability for customers to migrate existing data from Windows Analytics Upgrade Readiness to Desktop Analytics during the onboarding process.

In addition to these updates, the 1906 release of System Center Configuration Manager further integrated Desktop Analytics with phased deployments, which means you can automate your pilot and production deployments with the health insights from Desktop Analytics. Looking ahead, we’ll soon enable customers who have already onboarded to migrate their administrator data. And we’re constantly investing in longer-running service enhancements like performance and reliability improvements.

Customers can upgrade faster with Desktop Analytics

We love hearing stories from customers, like Sandvik, who integrated Desktop Analytics into their update workflow and are excited about the results they’re seeing.
“Desktop Analytics provides us valuable information and insights about our devices, giving us confidence to move at a high pace with Windows 10 feature updates.”
—Ola Ström, Solutions Architect, Devices and Platform Services, at Sandvik
In talking with more than a dozen customers over the last month, I have consistently heard that the work of application and driver validations takes as much as 40 percent of the overall time and 60 percent of the overall budget of an upgrade to a new version of Windows. With Desktop Analytics, we automate this work and can remove most of the time and expense.

Start using Desktop Analytics today

As we’ve shared before, Desktop Analytics builds on what we developed with Windows Analytics by adding deeper integration with Configuration Manager and provides a ring-based approach to deployment using health signals. Soon we’ll also integrate Desktop Analytics into Microsoft Intune.

As you onboard and use the tool, don’t forget to give us your feedback on UserVoice or offer it directly in the Desktop Analytics portal—we look forward to reading it!

Learn more about Desktop Analytics and start using Desktop Analytics today.
Click to expand...

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/micr...top-analytics/

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) View on Twiiter
Click to expand...

:)

Brink · Oct 16, 2019

Announcing general availability of Upgrade Readiness

We are pleased to announce the general availability of Upgrade Readiness, one of the solutions in the suite of solutions called Windows Analytics. Upgrade Readiness helps you plan and manage the Windows upgrade process from beginning to end and enables you adopt new Windows releases more quickly. With new Windows versions being released multiple times a year, ensuring application and driver compatibility on an ongoing basis is key to adopting new Windows versions as they are released. Windows Upgrade Readiness not only supports upgrade management from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, but it also supports Windows 10 upgrades in the Windows as a service model.

Upgrade Analytics helps you accelerate your move to Windows 10 by providing:

A visual workflow that guides you from pilot to production

Detailed computer and application inventory

Powerful computer-level search and drill-downs

Guidance and insights into application and driver compatibility issues with suggested fixes

Data-driven application rationalization tools

Application usage information that allows targeted validation and workflow to track validation progress and decisions

Data export to commonly used software deployment tools including System Center Configuration Manager

Here are some resources where you can learn more:

Windows analytics blog post

Upgrade Readiness documentation on TechNet

Evan Hissey
Program Manager

Microsoft System Center
Click to expand...

Source: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...ade-readiness/

Brink · Oct 16, 2019

Introducing Windows Desktop Program for Desktop Application Analytics

An important feature for desktop application developers is the ability to view detailed analytics about application performance and its popularity with users. Until today, developers had difficulty accessing these analytics without cobbling together multiple tools. With the new Windows Desktop Program, developers now have a convenient, one-stop portal to view their desktop application analytics or access the data via an API. Statistics and charts quickly show how the applications are doing– from how many customers they’ve reached to detailed performance data on crashes and failures. With these analytics, developers can better track and prioritize fixes, monitor the distribution of their application, prepare and improve the overall experience for their customers.

There’s no charge to access this data—all you need to do is sign up with a Microsoft account to identify yourself, then upload a signed file using the same trusted, valid certificate your company uses to sign your applications.

Once you sign up for the Windows Desktop Application Program and register your certificates, you’ll be able to use the analytics reports to:

View a summary of all failure types, sorted by number of hits

Drill down into each failure and download stack traces and CAB files to debug the issue faster

Compare the health status and adoption of a newly released version of your application to previous releases

View health data in aggregate or by region, allowing you to isolate issues that are specific to a region

Compare performance and adoption of your desktop applications across Windows versions, such as the latest Windows 10 or Windows Insider releases.

To view analytics for your applications:

Sign up for the Windows Desktop Application Program. If you already have a Windows Dev Center account, you can opt in to this program on the Programs page in Account settings. Otherwise, you can sign up here.

Follow the steps to download an unsigned file, sign it with the same code-signing certificate your company uses to sign your desktop applications, and upload the newly signed file back through the portal.

That’s it! We will take the signed file you just uploaded and map it to the telemetry we collect on all applications with the same certificate to show you your analytics data. To learn more, check out our documentation here.

Click to expand...

Source: Introducing the Windows Desktop Program for Desktop Application Analytics - Windows Developer Blog

Brink · Oct 16, 2019

Upgrade Analytics Public Preview is now available

Upgrade Analytics is now available as a Public Preview. You can either add it to an existing OMS workspace or you can sign up for a new OMS workspace with the Upgrade Analytics solution enabled.

Data generated by Upgrade Analytics is not counted towards your OMS quota, so you can use a free-tier OMS workspace for Upgrade Analytics. There will be no extra charges generated by Upgrade Analytics data if you are using a Standard of Premium tier workspace.

Once you have an OMS workspace with the Upgrade Analytics solution enabled, there are a couple of steps you need to take in order to see your organization’s data in Upgrade Analytics. These are described in detail in the Upgrade Analytics documentation on TechNet. On a high level, you need to do the following:

1) Generate a Commercial ID in OMS and link it to your OMS workspace

2) Make sure you have the correct ‘Compatibility Update’ installed on your user computers

3) Review your firewall configuration and allow access to the service

4) Configure the your user computers with the Commercial ID and an Opt In flag so data can be linked to your OMS workspace

5) Kick off a data collection run

Once the data is sent, it will usually show up in Upgrade Analytics within 48 hours.

As an IT Pro you decide whether or not data is sent to the service. Data is only sent from Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 computers if the Opt In flag is set as described in step 4 or the computers are opted in to the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). Set Windows 10 computers to at least the ‘Basic’ telemetry level in order to allow them to send data to the service. You can find information about the data points sent to the service in the TechNet documentation.

I will publish more information on how to use the data in Upgrade Analytics in a future blog post.

If you have questions or feedback, feel free to use the comments below.
Click to expand...

Source: Upgrade Analytics Public Preview is now available Upgrade Analytics blog

See also: Making upgrading to Windows 10 simpler with Windows Upgrade Analytics Windows for IT Pros

Windows 10: Microsoft announces general availability of Desktop Analytics

Microsoft announces general availability of Desktop Analytics

Microsoft announces general availability of Desktop Analytics

Microsoft announces general availability of Desktop Analytics

Microsoft announces general availability of Desktop Analytics - Similar Threads - Microsoft announces general

Announcing Microsoft Edge WebView2 General Availability

Microsoft announces generally available release of PowerShell 7.0

Announcing Microsoft Azure IoT Device Agent V2 general availability

Announcing general availability of Visual Studio IntelliCode

Announcing General Availability of Microsoft 365 Business apps

Announcing Azure DNS General Availability

Announcing general availability of Upgrade Readiness

Announcing the .NET Framework 4.7 General Availability

Announcing Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016 general availability