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Microsoft 365 Business and Upgrade Analytics – Preparing to move to Windows 10 Business

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For OEM reseller partners the information that Upgrade Analytics collects can come in handy in two ways - first of all it helps to detect if there are any real software blockers that prevent the move to Windows 10. OEMs still get requests for Windows 7 based devices, so this information that we collect could help to clarify whether or not the customer's older software packages really do need an old Windows version to run successfully. The second one is also very important to those in the business of selling new devices - will new hardware sales be required, or can we make do with what the customer has got for a little while longer.

I've previously posted about Windows 10 Business, so I won't go into that in this post. Instead the focus of this post is how set up Operations Management Suite's Windows Analytics Upgrade Anaytlics to capture information from your Windows 7 and Windows 8.x devices for upgrade analysis purposes. Even if you are just targeting Windows 10 Pro deployments, the information in this post is just as relevant, so don't be concerned about references to Windows 10 Business.

What do you need to get started? First up, if you don't already have an Azure subscription, sign up for an Azure Fee Account. If you haven't looked at what you get with an Azure Free Account, take a look at the Frequently Asked Questions. My preferred approach when setting up an Azure Subscription is to add it to the same Azure Active Directory tenant as the Microsoft 365/Office 365/Enterprise Mobility + Security subscription so that you get deeper integration when you start using more of Azure's functionality.

 

 

If you go to https://mms.microsoft.com you get the above page, where you need to create a new OMS workspace.

It needs to have a unique name, and you will be presented with a selection of Azure regions to deploy to.

We can now assign this OMS Workspace to our Azure subscription.

Once setup is finalised, we are taken to the OMS Workspace, which starts out blank, but if we click on the Gallery (shopping bag) icon on the left we can see a range of solutions. I've highlighted Upgrade Readiness solution, as it's the main one I will be focusing on for now. Next to it you will see Device Health, which is licensed via the following Windows SKUs…

  • Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education per-device with active Software Assurance
  • Windows 10 Enterprise E3 or E5 per-device or per-user subscription (including Microsoft 365 F1, E3, or E5)
  • Windows 10 Education A3 or A5 (including Microsoft 365 Education A3 or A5)
  • Windows VDA E3 or E5 per-device or per-user subscription

However, for Upgrade Readiness you don't need the above licenses, and the data is zero-rated so it ends up as a free of charge service.

The other option I want you to enable is the Update Compliance solution, which will be useful for longer term monitoring of Windows 10 devices that will be joining Azure Active Directory.

We start by adding Upgrade Readiness.

Adding the Upgrade Readiness solution doesn't take very long…

At which point we are taken to the OMS Workspace which is empty no longer.

To access settings for the Workspace click on the gear icon at the top of the browser session

Here you can see that Upgrade Readiness was successfully added.

Go back to the Gallery and add Update Compliance.

This shouldn't take long.

Now we have two OMS Solutions in the Workspace.

Click on the gear icon again to take a look at the settings.

You can see that both of the Solutions are listed.

Clicking on Connected Sources -> Windows Telemetry brings us to the final items for today – the Commercial ID Key. This is the unique identifier that we will need to initially load on to our Windows 7 and Windows 8.x devices to check Upgrade Readiness, and in the next post in this series I will cover deployment of the settings to those devices.