Getting started with Windows 365 Business

Step by step deployment instructions of Windows 365 Business

Please read my introduction blog, Starting with Windows 365 if you are looking for Windows 365 basic information.

Blog series

Windows 365 Business – Prerequisites

In order for Windows 365 Business to work you will need to enable the ability for users to join devices to the Azure AD. You can enable this by going to portal.azure.com selecting the Azure Active Directory and then Devices and Device settings. Here you can select All, or scope it to a group of users.

Users may join devices to Azure AD

Before assigning any licenses its good to set the organization default settings. Here you can choose whether a user should be a standard user or local administrator, what operation system should be deployed and the language. These settings are only deployed when assigning a new cloud pc. You can also those to enroll the new devices into Microsoft Endpoint Manager, but your user will also need a separate Intune license. You can modify these settings my signing in to https://windows365.microsoft.com/

Update organization settings

Select Update organization setting:

Update organization settings

In my case I also enroll new cloud devices in Endpoint Manager since I have a suitable license.

Assign your user with a license

My test User Goofy is a user who is synced from Active Directory with AAD Connect to Azure AD. You do not need a synchronized user, a cloud only user is also fine. I’m assigning Goofy a Microsoft 365 Business Premium license. This includes Intune so I can manage the device. I’m also assigning the Windows 365 business 2 vCPU, 8 GB, 128 GB license. By assigning the Windows 365 license Microsoft immediately starts provisioning a new cloud pc for the user. This process does take some time to complete. You can monitor this process by selecting the user and by selecting Devices:

Cloud pc is provisioning

After some time you will see that the device is ready for the user to work with:

Cloud PC is ready

Since I also selected the option to enroll the device into Intune you can also find the device there.

Cloud PC in Endpoint manager

End user experience

When the user sings into Windows 365 (microsoft.com) they will see the first launch experience:

The user can then launch the Cloud pc

The user can also use the remote desktop application. If possible, I would recommend using the app, because it has better performance than the browser. The user can download the app from the Microsoft Docs.
Open the application and select subscribe and sign in with your credentials

You can now also use the new Windows 365 app which has been announced at Ingite 2022.

Managing Windows 365 Business

As an administrator you would want to administer the device. You have a couple of options. If you have enrolled the device into Intune then your options are limited. When selecting the user in the windows365.microsoft.com portal you have a couple of options:

Managing the device with Intune

Since the device is enrolled with Intune we can also push configurations to the device. I did notice some differences with enrolling normal clients into Intune. There also seem to be some differences with the Windows 365 Enterprise. When opening the device overview in Intune.

There seems to be no primary or enrolled by users, and the device model is stated Virtual Machine. If you compare this with an Windows 365 Enterprise enrollment you see that the primary user and the device model is stated

The lack of an primary user isn’t really an issue, the reason for this is properly that Microsoft uses a different enrollment process like a build enrollment token to enroll the device. The other difference doesn’t seem big until you want to create custom filter rules Create a filter for your Cloud PCs | Microsoft Learn. This option can be useful when you want to target specific Windows 365 cloud pc’s in your environment. Unfortunately this option is not available.

Otherwise, all options that you can use for managing your devices is also possible with Windows 365 business. You can deploy apps, and configurations to your devices as your company requires.