Importing Third-Party ADMX Files to Intune

SUMMARY:

Intune allows you to import third-party ADMX files into its platform, enabling you to create and deploy configuration profiles with settings specific to the third-party application (e.g. Google Chrome). In this article, I'd like to provide a high-level overview of the steps to import third-party ADMX files.

Table of Contents

What is an ADMX File?

Prerequisites

Steps to Import Third-Party ADMX Files

Steps to Create a Configuration Profile Using the Third-Party ADMX File

What is an ADMX File?

Each ADMX file (administrative template file) contains a category of group policies in a structured, XML file. Each group policy references a setting or preference that can be configured on a Windows device. These settings mostly configure the Registry and its keys and value entries.

ADMX files are used by the legacy Group Policy framework allowing admins to create group policy objects to configure end-user devices. With modern, cloud MDM platforms such as Intune, ADMX files are still used but more so converted. Click the link below to learn what happens to an ADMX file once imported to Intune:

https://www.dmtt.blog/post/what-are-oma-uris-and-csps-in-intune#viewer-n7jc0154126

Prerequisites

• You can only import a maximum of 20 ADMX files.

• Each file cannot be bigger than 1 MB.

• Each ADMX file can only have one ADML file.

• The ADML file is the language file referenced by the ADMX templates.

• Currently, the only supported language is en-us.

IMPORTANT:

An ADMX file may reference other ADMX file(s). If so, you must import the referenced ADMX file(s) first. If you don't import the referenced file(s) first, you will receive the error below after trying to upload the ADMX file: ADMX file referenced not found NamespaceMissing. Please upload it first. If you do receive this error, delete the uploaded ADMX file and upload the referenced ADMX file first. To check if an ADMX file references another ADMX file, open the file with a text editor application such as Notepad. See the example below:

In the example below, I pasted part of Chrome's ADMX file. It references both Google's and Windows's ADMX files, so both Google's and Windows's ADMX files must be imported first.

<policyNamespaces>
    <target namespace="Google.Policies.Chrome" prefix="chrome"/>
    <using namespace="Google.Policies" prefix="Google"/>
    <using namespace="Microsoft.Policies.Windows" prefix="windows"/>
</policyNamespaces>

Steps to Import Third-Party ADMX Files

• Open the Intune Portal

• Navigate to Devices > Windows > Configuration

• Select the Import ADMX tab then select + Import

• Select the folder icons and navigate to the ADMX and ADML files.

• Select Next and Review/Create.

• Once done, you can select the Import ADMX tab to see your imported file(s).

• If successful, you should see Available under the Status column.

Steps to Create a Configuration Profile Using the Third-Party ADMX File

• While in the Intune Portal, navigate to Devices > Windows > Configuration

• Select the Policy tab

• Select + Create and then select + New Policy

  • Platform: Windows 10 and later

  • Profile Type: Templates

  • Template Name: Imported Administrative templates (Preview)

• Select Create.

Cover picture provided by Storyset.