If you are planning to learn Microsoft Intune, it’s essential to have your own test environment to get your hands dirty, test and check the various implementations, features, and management capabilities to complement the theoretical knowledge that you can gain from the different resources that are available on the internet.
Microsoft Intune does offer a 30-day Fully Functional Trial to begin with, however, this 30-day limit may seem quite restrictive, especially for the working professionals.
Fortunately, Microsoft also offers a M365 Developer Program where you can sign-up and get a fully functional tenant with 25 M365 E5 licenses. The tenant (subscription) is good for 90 days and gets renewed perpetually every 90 days if the tenant has enough activity.
This blog post takes you through the steps of setting up your own M365 dev-test tenant to help in your Intune learning journey.
Table of Contents
Targeted Audience
This blog post is targeted for working professionals who are
- proficient with other UEM/MDM tools like Workspace One, MobileIron, etc. and want to jump ship to get a taste of things with Microsoft Intune, or
- already working with SCCM but is being asked by management to upskill with Microsoft Intune, or
- already managing devices with Intune but the scope is limited to certain features and functionality or platform and as such want to get hands-on on the other platforms/features of Intune, or
- looking to make a switch (technology/workplace) for career betterment and want to ride the high with Microsoft Intune
Just graduated from college and thinking if you can make a career of the highly in-trend modern workplace and modern management area? Then this post can also be of help to you.
Different resources available to help learn Intune easily
To begin with, you can get a lot of resources available online to start your Intune learning journey.
- There is the MS Learn platform (and here’s my curated Learn collection) and the MS Intune Documentation which in itself is quite extensive to start with. (Yes I know MS documents are not always kept up-to-date with the recent changes, but it’s still good if you use it as your base reference!)
- You can find online courses related to MEM/Intune in the various learning platforms like Pluralsight, Udemy, etc.
- The community spaces on the different social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube channels that focuses on Microsoft Intune serves as a good source of information, and last but not least,
- You get amazing content on Microsoft Intune, tips and tricks, know-hows about new feature releases, etc. from the different blog sites that are maintained by the likes of Microsoft MVPs like Anoop C Nair, Prajwal Desai, Oliver Kieselbach, Peter Klapwijk, and more. (Do check my blog site as well!)
However, learning from all these sources can help you gain theoretical knowledge only.
In order to succeed in your modern management job role or ace the interview for making the switch to modern management roles, it’s very important that you have quality hands-on experience with the product as well.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them…
And this is where this blog post helps you to set up your own test tenant so that you can get the hands-on experience of modern managing devices with Microsoft Intune.
Sign-up for M365 Developer Program
To create a M365 dev-test tenant,
- navigate to the M365 Developer Program website
- click on Join Now
- sign-in with a Microsoft Account (@outlook.com or @hotmail.com account). If you do not have one, you need to create one.
- Fill up the details as requested – Country, Company and Language preferences.
- Mark the checkbox to accept the T&C of M365 Developer Program and click on Next.
- You can select the option that best fits your focus and click on Next.
- Choose the areas within M365 that you are interested in. Note that since our focus will be primarily on device management and not any development work (which you can of course!), you can choose whatever you like here and click on Save.
You would now be taken to your profile that is created with the M365 Developer Program. There will be a pop-up dialog box to ask you to set up your new M365 dev subscription. You can Close the pop-up dialog box.
Note that here we signed up for the M365 Developer Program using a Microsoft Account. But if you wish to, you can also sign in with a Work Account. Or if you have a Visual Studio Pro or Enterprise subscription, then you can get a Microsoft 365 developer subscription from your Visual Studio subscriber portal.
Once you have signed in to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program, you can further proceed to set up the M365 E5 dev subscription.
Setup M365 E5 Dev Subscription
- Click on the Set up E5 subscription button that is displayed on your M365 Dev Program Profile/Dashboard.
- Fill up the details that are marked required and click on Continue.
The User you are creating here will be the Global Admin account for the tenant.
- Complete MFA requirements for security.
Once done, your M365 Dev subscription will get set up. You can check the status of your subscription by visiting the M365 Developer Program dashboard.
Note that the subscription status shows a Renewable.
The M365 E5 developer subscription is now set up.
Get started with your new M365 dev tenant
You can now sign in to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager portal using the Administrator account you created during the subscription setup.
But before you start using this tenant, if you already own a public domain, you may want to add it as a custom domain before you start creating your test users.
For that, you can login to the M365 Admin Center and navigate to Settings > Domains to add a custom domain.
From here you can add a public domain that you own. You would require to create DNS record (a TXT or an MX record) for your domain, for domain verification purposes.
Once you create the DNS records for your domain, it may take up to 72 hours to propagate. Once the records are updated, the domain verification will pass through and the domain will be set up for you to use in your tenant.
Below you can see I have added two public domains that I have, one which has completed the setup and the other in the Incomplete setup stage due to pending domain verification.
If you have successfully set up a custom domain for your tenant, you can then start to use it for your user accounts. Notice that while creating a user account, you can choose what domain to use for the account.
Note that the .onmicrosoft.com domain created while setting up subscription is the current default domain for the tenant. But once you add a custom domain, you can change the default domain from the .onmicrosoft.com address to your custom domain.
If you don’t add a custom Internet routable domain, any users you create will use the default domain that you created during the subscription setup (the .onmicrosoft.com domain)
Wrap Up
Now that you are all set,
- start creating your test user accounts,
- assign license to them, and
- use them to enroll devices for testing.
That’s all for today. If you need to know more about the M365 Developer Program, check the FAQ.
Happy testing and wish you all the best as you embark on your Intune learning journey.
