In Windows Intune, there are two main roles in the management of PCs.  First there are administrators: these are the individuals who log into the Windows Intune console and perform the various activities needed to manage PCs, such as managing updates, configuring policies, and setting up malware protection.  Secondly, there are recipients: these are individuals who are actively involved in the PC management processes, but may not require direct access to the Windows Intune console.  A recipient might receive an email notification from Windows Intune, advising them of a condition they need to investigate and/or remedy, but they would not need to log into the console in order to do so.  For example, you may want to send alerts about hardware (hard disk is reaching capacity, CPU utilization is high, etc.) to one recipient for investigation, while alerts regarding application errors might go to a different person.  Administrators can be recipients, but recipients are not necessarily administrators.

In Windows Intune admin console you can manage  administrators or email recipients by going to the “Administration” area. Once you are in the Administration workspace, the “Administrator Management” selection lets you manage your administrators and the “Alerts and Notifications” selection lets you manage the email recipients.

Administrators Management:

When you sign up for the Windows Intune beta, you create a ‘service administrator’ that you use to login to the Windows Intune Console. Once you log into the Windows Intune console you can add additional “service administrators” by selecting “Administrator Management” in the Administration workspace . To do this, click on “Add Administrator” in the top task area. You can only add a Windows live ID as an administrator, since this is what Windows Intune uses to authenticate the user. If desired, you can also delete the added service administrators by selecting the specific administrator from the list and click on “Delete Administrator”.


Recipients Management:

When you add a service administrator they are automatically added to the list of Recipients, and you can add additional recipients by going to  “Recipients” node in “Alerts and Notifications” selection in the Administration workspace. Once you are in “Recipients” area you can add more recipients by clicking on “Add” on the top task area. Any valid email address can be used for a recipient.


Once you have added the recipients you can go to the “Notification Rules” node in “Alerts and Notifications” Sub menu under “Administration” area and select the recipients by selecting a notification rule and clicking on “Select Recipients” on top task area.


Setting up Administrators and recipients will help you get more effective use out of Windows Intune.  We encourage you to explore this area in detail, and look at ways you can use this to support your organization’s PC management processes.  As always, we welcome your comments and feedback on how we might make these features better!

Submitted by Karuna Koneru, Senior Software Engineer on the Windows Intune Team