Windows 10: Shift to a modern desktop with Microsoft 365

Brink · Jan 15, 2019

At the outset of 2019, we all have personal goals, but most of us also have professional goals for the year ahead. For those of us in IT, this is a time to think about how you deliver the modern, empowering workplace for your business in a cloud-connected world.

With Windows 7 end of support coming in one year—January 14, 2020—and Office 2010 close behind, there’s an opportunity right now to be proactive about what’s next. Changes and upgrades in technology are inevitable, and there’s never been a better time to start putting in motion the things you need to do to shift your organization to a modern desktop with Microsoft 365. As you think about this upgrade, this is a time to consider how your approach can set you up for the future to deliver an incredible experience for your users that is empowering and secure.

How, exactly, can you do this?

First, it goes without saying that consumers and enterprises change at different speeds. Because of this, we got an early start helping IT pros prepare, whether you’re a small to midsize business or a large enterprise. In the past, IT management has been tedious, manual, and time-consuming, but shifting to a modern desktop with Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus is a streamlined process that brings with it the most productive and most secure computing experience driven through cloud intelligence.

This shift is already well underway in thousands of organizations around the world. In fact, more than half of all commercial monthly active devices are already on Windows 10. You can see the results in companies like Hendrick Automotive Group, Anheuser-Busch, Fruit of the Loom, City of Corona, and Rogers Communications. Each of these—and many others—are already benefitting from the improved security and productivity offered by a modern desktop. Curious about how you can benefit from a modern desktop with Microsoft 365? Check out the Microsoft 365 Modern Desktop ROI Estimator developed by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Microsoft. It is an interactive model that helps you determine the economic impact on your specific environment of moving to Microsoft 365.

Right now, security concerns are the top reason organizations are making the shift to a modern desktop. Putting the right technology in the hands of users can prevent some of the most common security threats, such as compromised credentials. For example, Windows 10 provides security features like Windows Hello, which enables companies to eliminate passwords, as well as support for FIDO2 security keys, which enables organizations to better secure their data and devices. Check out this Gartner report for more on Windows 10 security benefits.

When it comes to security in Office, Office 365 has powerful, built-in features to help you protect sensitive data, stay in control in the cloud, and meet your compliance needs. For example, Office 365 Message Encryption helps protect sensitive data without sacrificing productivity. Office 365 Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools help protect content such as HIPAA-related and General Data Protection Regulation-related (GDPR) data.

If you are still encountering blockers as you make this shift, there are some great resources available right now. Here are some new tools and insights delivered from the cloud that can help you move forward with confidence faster.

Getting started

As you get started, here are the top three resources you can use to make the shift to a modern desktop.

1. Build confidence in application compatibility with Desktop App Assure

We’ve heard loud and clear that one of the most important considerations for shifting to a modern desktop is application compatibility, and we’ve done a massive amount of work to ensure that Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus are now the most compatible upgrades ever. To work around any unforeseen barriers to upgrading, we created the Desktop App Assure program. If you aren’t familiar with the Desktop App Assure team (which we were very excited to announce in my keynote at Ignite 2018), take a minute to read this overview of the remarkable work they can do for you.

Keep in mind, however, that the Desktop App Assure team doesn’t exist because there are a lot of apps in need of remediation. Instead, the Desktop App Assure team was created to be a part of this better-than-ever compatibility, so you can have confidence when you upgrade. So far, out of 41,000 applications within their estates, customers have come to us to evaluate 7,000 applications for potential compatibility concerns. However, when the Desktop App Assure team dug into it, they found that only 49 apps required assistance. That’s a 197 percent difference between perception and reality. Another way to look at this is that only 0.1 percent of all the apps that customers who have worked with the Desktop App Assure team to evaluate have had a compatibility issue. That is incredible work by the Windows team to ensure compatibility! The Desktop App Assure team has already fixed many of these apps (and many were fixed during that first call with the customer), and I’ll detail everything else we’ve learned in a future post.

Building on this great momentum, we’re excited to announce today that Desktop App Assure is available globally. To get started with the Desktop App Assure team, simply contact FastTrack and a Microsoft engineer will follow up to work with you until the issue is resolved. Also, check out this site that details the entire range of services offered by the Desktop App Assure team—and if you want to get started right now, visit Desktop App Assure.

You can also see a more detailed discussion with a leader on the Desktop App Assure team in this section of my Endpoint Zone 1810 video.

2. Be a hero to your users with Office 365 ProPlus

The world is changing in dramatic ways driven by higher levels of mobility and technology access. In their personal lives, users are exposed to the latest apps that make them more productive, and they want the same in their work lives. Office 365 ProPlus, a fundamental component of the modern desktop, gives your users just that. Office 365 ProPlus enables users to collaborate in real time, across their devices, anywhere they are, and use AI-powered features like Designer in PowerPoint that help create beautiful presentations in minutes, or the new placeholders in Word that help users stay in the flow while writing. So we strongly encourage you—deploy the Office 365ProPlus apps that are powered by the cloud now and give your users the gift of productivity.

For IT, Office 365 ProPlus brings exclusive security value and ease of deployment. For instance, it is really simple to shift from Office perpetual to Office 365 ProPlus with the new Office Customization Tool. We know that many IT teams use Configuration Manager to deploy Office, and therefore this functionality is also available natively in the Configuration Manager (Current Branch). Using this, you can now easily manage your on-premises infrastructure and the cloud together. You can also simply toggle one control to clean out MSI deployments of Office perpetual editions when you migrate to Office 365 ProPlus Click-to-Run. More information is available in Overview of the Office Customization Tool for Click-To-Run. Plus, here is a brand-new video that walks you through the step-by-step process.

3. Improve your security and reduce complexity with co-management

This shift to the modern desktop is an extension of what many organizations are already doing today—and there are many ways to get started. For example, you can cloud-connect many of the tools and processes you’re already familiar with, like Configuration Manager and Active Directory.

Connecting your infrastructure to the cloud not only reduces the complexity, but also gives you the power of Microsoft’s cloud-driven intelligence that you can apply to countless aspects of your job, such as productivity, security, and management. By enabling co-management with just four clicks, you can unlock even more features that help you to manage your devices even better, such as conditional access. If you are using Configuration Manager Current Branch, you are modern, because Configuration Manager Current Branch is cloud-connected and continually updated. Co-management in which you attach Intune to your Configuration Manager deployment enables new scenarios and brings more cloud power to your environment.

Co-management is so important that we just launched an incredibly detailed new site with everything you need to know about how to make the case for co-management and how to unblock anything standing in your way.

Learn more

Don’t forget that you can now use the consolidated Microsoft 365 Admin Center to have a comprehensive view of all of your admin dashboards and tasks in one place. Many of the features we announced at Ignite are now live and ready for you to use right here.

We are 100 percent committed to helping you make the shift to a modern desktop because we believe it is legitimately the most secure, productive, and cost-effective solution.

If you need more step-by-step guidance on how to get started, just check out our Modern Desktop Deployment Center to see recommended steps, tools, and guidance for your shift to Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus. I think you’ll be really excited to see all the ways that you can leverage your existing tools and processes, while adopting modern management approaches along the way.

As you manage your overall migration journey and shift to the cloud, we also have other resources for you—for Windows Server 2008/2008 R2, SQL Server 2008/2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010, or Windows Embedded 7.

Let’s make the shift together. We are here for you every step of the way.
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Source: 2019 is the year to make the shift to a modern desktop - Microsoft 365 Blog

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Brink · Jan 15, 2019

Microsoft Helping customers shift to a modern desktop

IT is complex. And that means it can be difficult to keep up with the day-to-day demands of your organization, let alone deliver technological innovation that drives the business forward. In desktop management, this is especially true: the process of creating standard images, deploying devices, testing updates, and providing end user support hasn’t changed much in years. It can be tedious, manual, and time consuming. We’re determined to change that with our vision for a modern desktop powered by Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus. A modern desktop not only offers end users the most productive, most secure computing experience—it also saves IT time and money so you can focus on driving business results.

Today, we’re pleased to make three announcements that help you make the shift to a modern desktop:

Cloud-based analytics tools to make modern desktop deployment even easier.

A program to ensure app compatibility for upgrades and updates of Windows and Office.

Servicing and support changes to give you additional deployment flexibility.

Analytics to make modern desktop deployment easier

Collectively, you’ve told us that one of your biggest upgrade and update challenges is application testing. A critical part of any desktop deployment plan is analysis of existing applications—and the process of testing apps and remediating issues has historically been very manual and very time consuming. Microsoft 365 offers incredible tools today to help customers shift to a modern desktop, including System Center Configuration Manager, Microsoft Intune, Windows Analytics, and Office Readiness Toolkit. But we’ve felt like there’s even more we could do.

Today, we’re announcing that Windows Analytics is being expanded to Desktop Analytics—a new cloud-based service integrated with ConfigMgr and designed to create an inventory of apps running in the organization, assess app compatibility with the latest feature updates of Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus, and create pilot groups that represent the entire application and driver estate across a minimal set of devices.

The new Desktop Analytics service will provide insight and intelligence for you to make more informed decisions about the update readiness of your Windows and Office clients. You can then optimize pilot and production deployments with ConfigMgr. Combining data from your own organization with data aggregated from millions of devices connected to our cloud services, you can take the guess work out of testing and focus your attention on key blockers. We’ll share more information about Desktop Analytics and other modern desktop deployment tools at Ignite.

Standing behind our app compatibility promise

We’re also pleased to announce Desktop App Assure—a new service from Microsoft FastTrack designed to address issues with Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus app compatibility. Windows 10 is the most compatible Windows operating system ever, and using millions of data points from customer diagnostic data and the Windows Insider validation process, we’ve found that 99 percent of apps are compatible with new Windows updates. So you should generally expect that apps that work on Windows 7 will continue to work on Windows 10 and subsequent feature updates. But if you find any app compatibility issues after a Windows 10 or Office 365 ProPlus update, Desktop App Assure is designed to help you get a fix. Simply let us know by filing a ticket through FastTrack, and a Microsoft engineer will follow up to work with you until the issue is resolved. In short, Desktop App Assure operationalizes our Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus compatibility promise: We’ve got your back on app compatibility and are committed to removing it entirely as a blocker.

Desktop App Assure will be offered at no additional cost to Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education customers. We’ll share more details on this new service at Ignite and will begin to preview this service in North America on October 1, 2018, with worldwide availability by February 1, 2019.

Servicing and support flexibility

Longer Windows 10 servicing for enterprises and educational institutions
In April 2017, we aligned the Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus update cadence to a predictable semi-annual schedule, targeting September and March. While many customers—including Mars and Accenture—have shifted to a modern desktop and are using the semi-annual channel to take updates regularly with great success, we’ve also heard feedback from some of you that you need more time and flexibility in the Windows 10 update cycle.

Based on that feedback, we’re announcing four changes:

All currently supported feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions (versions 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803) will be supported for 30 months from their original release date. This will give customers on those versions more time for change management as they move to a faster update cycle.

All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of September (starting with 1809) will be supported for 30 months from their release date. This will give customers with longer deployment cycles the time they need to plan, test, and deploy.

All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of March (starting with 1903) will continue to be supported for 18 months from their release date. This maintains the semi-annual update cadence as our north star and retains the option for customers that want to update twice a year.

All feature releases of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, and Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported for 18 months (this applies to feature updates targeting both March and September).

In summary, our new modern desktop support policies—starting in September 2018—are:

Windows 7 Extended Security Updates
As previously announced, Windows 7 extended support is ending January 14, 2020. While many of you are already well on your way in deploying Windows 10, we understand that everyone is at a different point in the upgrade process.

With that in mind, today we are announcing that we will offer paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. The Windows 7 ESU will be sold on a per-device basis and the price will increase each year. Windows 7 ESUs will be available to all Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise customers in Volume Licensing, with a discount to customers with Windows software assurance, Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education subscriptions. In addition, Office 365 ProPlus will be supported on devices with active Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. This means that customers who purchase the Windows 7 ESU will be able to continue to run Office 365 ProPlus.

Please reach out to your partner or Microsoft account team for further details.

Support for Office 365 ProPlus on Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2016
Office 365 ProPlus delivers cloud-connected and always up-to-date versions of the Office desktop apps. To support customers already on Office 365 ProPlus through their operating system transitions, we are updating the Windows system requirements for Office 365 ProPlus and revising some announcements that were made in February. We are pleased to announce the following updates to our Office 365 ProPlus system requirements:

Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported on Windows 8.1 through January 2023, which is the end of support date for Windows 8.1.

Office 365 ProPlus will also continue to be supported on Windows Server 2016 until October 2025.

Office 2016 connectivity support for Office 365 services
In addition, we are modifying the Office 365 services system requirements related to service connectivity. In February, we announced that starting October 13, 2020, customers will need Office 365 ProPlus or Office 2019 clients in mainstream support to connect to Office 365 services. To give you more time to transition fully to the cloud, we are now modifying that policy and will continue to support Office 2016 connections with the Office 365 services through October 2023.

Shift to a modern desktop

You’ve been talking, and we’ve been listening. Specifically, we’ve heard your feedback on desktop deployment, and we’re working hard to introduce new capabilities, services, and policies to help you on your way. The combination of Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus delivers the most productive, most secure end user computing experience available. But we recognize that it takes time to both upgrade devices and operationalize new update processes. Today’s announcements are designed to respond to your feedback and make it easier, faster, and cheaper to deploy a modern desktop. We know that there is still a lot of work to do. But we’re committed to working with you and systematically resolving any issues. We’d love to hear your thoughts and look forward to seeing you and discussing in more detail in the keynotes and sessions at Ignite in a few weeks!
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Source: Helping customers shift to a modern desktop - Microsoft 365 Blog

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Loraine Mon · Jan 15, 2019

Shift, CRTL keys no working with Modern Remote Desktop

Due to the complexity of the issue regarding Shift and CTRL keys not working with modern remote desktop, we suggest that you post your concern on our

Technet Forums.

Regards.

ITDude81620 · Jan 15, 2019

Shift, CRTL keys no working with Modern Remote Desktop

Ran the most recent update to Windows 10 today, but still can't use the shift key in the modern remote desktop app. Anyone hear anything from Microsoft?

The crickets are telling me Microsoft would prefer we find a different vendor for Remote Desktop solutions???

This morning just for kicks after the update, I tried running fixes 1 and 2 but neither made any difference. Microsoft can pretend this is caused by something else, but sure looks like their own coding failure.

Windows 10: Shift to a modern desktop with Microsoft 365

Shift to a modern desktop with Microsoft 365

Shift to a modern desktop with Microsoft 365

Shift to a modern desktop with Microsoft 365

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