News

Microsoft Bringing Intune Dashboard to Office 365 Portal

• By Kurt Mackie
• May 02, 2016

To reduce the number of its management dashboards, Microsoft said recently it will move its Intune Service Health mobile management dashboard into its Office 365 management portal.

Intune's subscription management portal also is making that journey into the Office 365 management portal. Microsoft announced that switch back in September.

The current Intune Service Health dashboard will still be available, but Microsoft plans to "deprecate" it, meaning that development efforts will stop. No timeline was announced in that regard, but typically Microsoft gives just a one-year advance notice for its service product deprecations. A notice to that effect will appear on the current Intune Service Health dashboard in about one month's time, Microsoft indicated.

The new integrated Intune Service Health dashboard will have some improvements over the current dashboard, Microsoft promised. For instance, it will show only the alerts that are associated an organization's service. The alerts can be customized in the dashboard using a new API, although that's still at the preview stage right now.

In addition, alerts can be forwarded to specific e-mail addresses or distribution groups using the Office 365 Admin app. The Office 365 Admin app is Microsoft's solution for IT pros on the go. The app works with Android, iOS and Windows Phone platforms. Users get an overall dashboard view of Office 365 services on their mobile device using the app, according to this review.

Microsoft plans to centralize its messages about future updates to the integrated Intune Service Health dashboard within the Office 365 Message Center. Those notices will start appearing in the next one-to-two months.

In a related note, Microsoft also announced a change in nomenclature related to Intune and the Office 365 management portal.

Intune is Microsoft's mobile device management and mobile application management service that's typically sold as part of Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility Suite licensing. However, organizations with Office 365 subscriptions may already have a more limited mobile device management capability in place that comes free with the Office 365 management portal. It shows up as the "Mobile Device Management" node in that management portal.

Last week, Microsoft announced plans to rename that node to the "Mobile Device Management for Office 365" node. The change will take effect "in the coming weeks." Apparently, the renaming is being done to avoid the potential confusion associated with bringing Intune mobile management into the portal.