2025 is coming to an end, and while many IT teams have continued using Microsoft Intune the same old way—push a profile, deploy apps, check compliance—Microsoft has quietly shipped some of its biggest upgrades ever.
Most of these features didn’t trend online.
Most weren’t talked about in your IT groups.
Most admins have not enabled even one of them.
But in 2026, these hidden capabilities will decide:
- how secure your organization is
- how fast onboarding happens
- how well Autopilot behaves
- how efficiently your team works
- how strong your compliance story is
Let’s break down the 7 most underrated Intune features of 2025, explained in a simple, step-by-step, real-world way.
🔥 1. Advanced Analytics & Device Query — The Mini SIEM Living Inside Intune
2025 introduced something every IT admin needed but never asked for:
Advanced Analytics + Device Query
A powerful engine that lets you:
- Run deep device queries
- Identify performance issues instantly
- Detect configuration drift
- Find misbehaving apps
- Export results into actionable datasets
⭐ Why this matters in 2026
IT teams will rely heavily on automation and data-driven troubleshooting.
Advanced Analytics turns Intune into a proactive monitoring system, not a passive dashboard.
🛠️ Real Example: Fixing Global Device Slowness
- Go to Reports → Device Query
- Run a query for:
- RAM ≤ 8 GB
- Disk free < 15%
- OS build < your baseline
- Export → Create a dynamic group
- Apply:
- cleanup scripts
- performance remediation
- upgrade OS baseline
Outcome:
A 3-hour issue analysis becomes a 10-minute workflow.
🔐 2. Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) — Identity-Aware Elevation
Most people think EPM is “just elevation”.
2025 changed that.
Now you get:
- Elevation as the current user
- Wildcard-based rule support
- Explicit deny rules
- Full audit history
- EPM Overview dashboard
⭐ Why this matters in 2026
Organizations will aggressively remove local admin rights to meet:
- Zero Trust
- Cyber insurance requirements
- Security baseline targets
EPM identity-aware elevation does this without breaking apps.
🛠️ Example: Remove all local admins in 2 weeks
- Create elevation rule
- Set Run as: Current User
- Add wildcard for app family
- Add deny rules for risky tools
- Monitor elevation logs
Outcome:
You disable local admin company-wide without user complaints.
📋 3. Enrollment Time Grouping Failures — Your Autopilot Troubleshooting Lifesaver
Hidden under monitoring, this report solves a major pain:
When devices fail to join their static device groups during enrollment.
⭐ Why this matters in 2026
Autopilot will be used more than ever for:
- remote onboarding
- branch office rollouts
- device refresh
- contractor laptop provisioning
When a device lands in the wrong group → everything breaks.
🛠️ How to use it
- Go to Devices → Monitor → Enrollment Time Grouping Failures
- Filter last 48 hours
- Check:
- missing group
- wrong rule
- invalid assignment
- Fix mappings
- Re-run Autopilot
Outcome:
You eliminate 60–80% of ESP failures.
🚀 4. MMP-C & Windows Declared Configuration — Intune’s New Engine
2025 introduced the new management flow behind modern Windows:
MMP-C (Microsoft Management Platform – Cloud)
A new dual enrollment engine providing:
- State-based configuration
- Automatic drift correction
- Faster policy application
- Better reliability than legacy OMA-DM
⭐ Why this matters in 2026
Microsoft is moving toward:
“Tell Windows what state it should stay in — and it maintains itself”.
2026 will bring more WinDC workloads, making MMP-C the new standard.
🛠️ Example: You set a firewall rule → user changes it → MMP-C fixes it silently
This is true desired-state configuration for Windows devices.
🌍 5. Cross-Platform Device Inventory — Goodbye Shadow IT
2025 Intune now detects:
- Linux endpoints
- Servers
- Contractor devices
- Rooted / jailbroken mobile devices
- Unmanaged Windows machines
This is not full management — but full visibility.
⭐ Why this matters in 2026
Zero Trust requires knowing every device, even if it’s unmanaged.
🛠️ Real Example:
- Pull all unknown or unmanaged devices
- Tag them
- Apply Conditional Access → block risky endpoints
- Report “Shadow IT cleanup” to leadership
A small step with huge organizational value.
🤖 6. Copilot Inside Intune — The Troubleshooting Brain
Copilot in Intune is more than a chatbot.
It can:
- Read policy assignments
- Interpret device state
- Analyze log files
- Explain why a policy failed
- Provide step-by-step fixes
⭐ Why this matters in 2026
IT teams are expected to handle more devices with fewer people.
Copilot becomes your AI Level-1 engineer.
🛠️ Try This: Ask Copilot
“Tell Windows what state it should stay in — and it maintains itself.”
You’ll instantly see root causes like:
- unsupported TPM
- CSP conflicts
- missing prereqs
- wrong baseline
This is magic during audits and onboarding waves.
🧱 7. The Underestimated Quality-of-Life Features That Save Hours Weekly
Smaller, quieter updates that matter:
- Multi-admin approvals for wipes
- Export device query to CSV
- Updated hardware attestation details
- Windows Backup policy via Intune
- Vulnerability Remediation Agent
- EPM scope-tag restriction
- Android compliance enhancements
⭐ Why this matters in 2026
All these small efficiencies stack up and make your Intune tenant enterprise-grade.
Intune 2025 Was the Year of Hidden Power — 2026 Will Be the Year of Adoption
Most of these features shipped quietly.
Few were discussed.
But all of them will become mandatory best-practice in 2026.
If you implement even one of these hidden gems before the new year, you’ll stay 12 months ahead of most Intune admins.
Which hidden Intune 2025 feature would you like a full guide for?
Comment below — I’ll create a detailed breakdown for the most requested one
