IntuneCD tool

IntuneCD or, Intune Continuous Delivery as it stands for is a Python package that is used to back up and update configurations in Intune. It was created with running it from a pipeline in mind. Using this approach we get complete history of which configurations have been changed and what setting has been changed.

The main function is to back up configurations from Intune to a Git repository from a DEV environment and if any configurations has changed, push them to PROD Intune environment.

The package can also be run standalone outside a pipeline, or in one to only backup data. Since 1.0.4, configurations are also created if they cannot be found. This means this tool could be used in a tenant to tenant migration scenario as well.

Exciting news 📣

The front end for IntuneCD has now been released. Check it out here

What's new in 1.1.3

• Added backup and update of Enrollment Status Page
• Configurations are now documented in alphabetical order
• Added the ability to backup all Autopilot devices. To save a record of your Autopilot devices, run the backup with the -ap True parameter

What's new in 1.1.2

• Added new exclusions for backup and update, it's now possible to exclude certain configurations from backup and update.
  • Example to exclude in backup: IntuneCD-startbackup -e assignments AppConfigurations Profiles
  • Example to exclude in update: IntuneCD-startupdate -e AppConfigurations Profiles
• Added capabilities to update the IntuneCD frontend with data
  • Once the frontend is available all that will be needed to update with data is to add -f <frontend_url> to startbackup and startupdate command and set the API key in ENV variables.
• Added ability to configure title, intro, tenant and updated lines in the documentation using a JSON string, example:
  • -j "{\"title\": \"demo\", \"intro\": \"demo\", \"tenant\": \"demo\", \"updated\": \"demo\"}"
• Added unit tests
• Changed deprecated OptionParser to ArgumentParser
• Improved the documentation
• Improved overall code readability

What's new in 1.1.1

• Added ability to split documentation into categories using -s Y in intunecd-startdocumentation
• Added ability to set max length of output in documentation using -m {int_value} in intunecd-startdocumentation
• Added backup and documentation of Group Policy Configurations
• Added retry if 503 is encountered during a graph call

Install this package

pip install IntuneCD

Update this package

pip install IntuneCD --upgrade

What is backed up, updated, created and documented?

Payload	Back up	Update	Document	Create	Notes
Apple Push Notification	🎉		🎉
Apple Volume Purchase Program tokens	🎉		🎉
Application Configuration Policies	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Application Protection Policies	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Applications	🎉		🎉
Compliance Policies	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Device Configurations	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉	For custom macOS and iOS configurations, mobileconfigs are backed up
Group Policy Configurations	🎉		🎉
Enrollment profiles	🎉 1	🎉	🎉	🎉 2
Enrollment Status Page	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Endpoint Security	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉	Security Baselines Antivirus Disk Encryption Firewall Endpoint Detection and Response Attack Surface Reduction Account Protection
Filters	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Managed Google Play	🎉		🎉
Notification Templates	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Proactive Remediations	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Partner Connections	🎉		🎉		Compliance Management Remote Assistance
Shell Scripts	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Powershell Scripts	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉
Settings Catalog Policies	🎉	🎉	🎉	🎉

Required Azure AD application Graph API permissions

• DeviceManagementApps.ReadWrite.All
• DeviceManagementConfiguration.ReadWrite.All
• DeviceManagementServiceConfig.ReadWrite.All
• Group.Read.All

If you just want to back up you can get away with only Read permission (except for DeviceManagementConfiguration)!

How do I use it?

You have two options, using a pipeline or running it locally. Let's have a look at both.

Parameters

To see which parameters you have to provide just type: IntuneCD-startbackup --help, IntuneCD-startupdate --help or IntuneCD-startdocumentation --help

Example options:

• -h, --help show this help message and exit
• -o OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT
  • The format backups will be saved as, valid options are json or yaml. Default is json
• -p PATH, --path=PATH
  • The path to which the configurations will be saved. Default value is $(Build.SourcesDirectory)
• -m MODE, --mode=MODE
  • The mode in which the script is run, 0 = devtoprod (backup from dev -> update to prod) uses os.environ DEV_TENANT_NAME, DEV_CLIENT_ID, DEV_CLIENT_SECRET, 1 = standalone (backup from prod) uses os.environ TENANT_NAME, CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET
• -a LOCALAUTH, --localauth=LOCALAUTH
  • When this paramater is set, provide a path to a local json file containing the following keys: params:TENANT_NAME, CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET when run in standalone mode and params:DEV_TENANT_NAME, DEV_CLIENT_ID, DEV_CLIENT_SECRET when run in devtoprod

For IntuneCD-startupdate 1.0.4 the -u parameter has been added which, if set, updates assignments for existing configurations. Again the groups are matched with displayName, so they must be the same in both tenants.

Run locally

First install the package using pip, then you must create a json which contains authentication parameters in the following format:

{
    "params":{
        "TENANT_NAME": "",
        "CLIENT_ID": "",
        "CLIENT_SECRET": ""
    }
}

When you have created the json, you can now run these commands

IntuneCD-startbackup -m 1 -o yaml -p /path/to/save/in -a /path/to/auth.json/

If you run without the -m parameter, make sure you have one auth.json pointing to DEV and another pointing to PROD, example:

{
    "params":{
        "DEV_TENANT_NAME": "",
        "DEV_CLIENT_ID": "",
        "DEV_CLIENT_SECRET": ""
    }
}

{
    "params":{
        "PROD_TENANT_NAME": "",
        "PROD_CLIENT_ID": "",
        "PROD_CLIENT_SECRET": ""
    }
}

IntuneCD-startbackup -o yaml -p /path/to/save/in -a /path/to/auth_DEV.json/

IntuneCD-startupdate -p /path/to/save/in -a /path/to/auth_PROD.json/

Run from a pipeline

I have tested this with Azure DevOps which is what I will give an example to. But it could just as well be run using GitHub Actions.

In the example pipeline below I'm running with the parameters -m 1 (standalone mode) and -o yaml (output configurations in yaml format). If you are running this in DEV -> PROD mode, remove -m and add DEV_ in front of all env: variables except for REPO_DIR. CLIENT_SECRET should be added as a secret variable.

DEV env variables:

  env:
    REPO_DIR: $(REPO_DIR)
    DEV_TENANT_NAME: $(TENANT_NAME)
    DEV_CLIENT_ID: $(CLIENT_ID)
    DEV_CLIENT_SECRET: $(CLIENT_SECRET)

Example backup pipeline:

pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest

variables:
  REPO_DIR: $(Build.SourcesDirectory)
  TENANT_NAME: example.onmicrosoft.com
  CLIENT_ID: xxxxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

steps:

- checkout: self
  persistCredentials: true

- script: pip3 install IntuneCD
  displayName: Install IntuneCD

- script: |
      git config --global user.name "devopspipeline"
      git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
  displayName: Configure Git

- script: IntuneCD-startbackup -m 1 -o yaml
  env:
    REPO_DIR: $(REPO_DIR)
    TENANT_NAME: $(TENANT_NAME)
    CLIENT_ID: $(CLIENT_ID)
    CLIENT_SECRET: $(CLIENT_SECRET)
  displayName: Run IntuneCD backup

- script: |
    cd $(REPO_DIR)
    git add --all
    git commit -m "Updated configurations"
    git push origin HEAD:main
  displayName: Commit changes

The following shows a pipeline which updates configurations in Intune. Again I'm running with -m 1. If this should update PROD, add PROD_ in front of all env: variables except REPO_DIR. CLIENT_SECRET should be added as a secret variable.

PROD env variables:

  env:
    REPO_DIR: $(REPO_DIR)
    PROD_TENANT_NAME: $(TENANT_NAME)
    PROD_CLIENT_ID: $(CLIENT_ID)
    PROD_CLIENT_SECRET: $(CLIENT_SECRET)

Example update pipeline:

pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest

variables:
  REPO_DIR: $(Build.SourcesDirectory)
  TENANT_NAME: example.onmicrosoft.com
  CLIENT_ID: xxxxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

steps:

- checkout: self
  persistCredentials: true

- script: pip3 install IntuneCD
  displayName: Install IntuneCD

- script: IntuneCD-startupdate -m 1
  env:
    REPO_DIR: $(REPO_DIR)
    TENANT_NAME: $(TENANT_NAME)
    CLIENT_ID: $(CLIENT_ID)
    CLIENT_SECRET: $(CLIENT_SECRET)
  displayName: Run update

Run documentation locally

To create a Markdown document from the backup files, run this command

IntuneCD-startdocumentation -p /path/to/backup/directory -o /path/to/create/markdown.md -t nameoftenant -i 'This is a demo introduction'

Run documentation in a pipeline

This step should be added to the backup pipeline to make sure the markdown document is updated when configurations changes. By default it writes to the README.md file in the repo, you can change this with the -o option

- script: IntuneCD-startdocumentation -t $(TENANT_NAME) -i 'This is a demo introduction'
  env:
    REPO_DIR: $(REPO_DIR)
  displayName: Run IntuneCD documentation

Good to know

When this tool tries to update configurations, it matches the display name. Therefore, the display name from DEV must match in PROD.

Current known limitations

Updating Windows Update Rings configurations is currently not supported, the tool can however create update rings if they don't exist.

Footnotes

1. Only Apple Business Manager and Windows Autopilot profiles are backed up. ↩

2. Only Windows Autopilot profiles are created. ↩