Intune Deploy Default Taskbar

September 30, 2023bytheDXT

Deploying the same taskbar to all users is a very nice quality of life improvement, as it can help eliminate the problems of users using Windows Mail instead of the already installed Microsoft Outlook.

I opted to deploy a standard default taskbar using Microsoft Intune as Microsoft Office is a required application on all Intune systems in my setup so I didn’t need to worry about a system trying to pin Microsoft Outlook when it wasn’t installed.

In this post, I’ll show you step-by-step how to create the taskbar XML file and how to deploy it using Microsoft Intune.

Create the XML

Copy the example taskbar XML below or copy it from Microsoft here.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LayoutModificationTemplate
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/LayoutModification"
    xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout"
    xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout"
    xmlns:taskbar="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/TaskbarLayout"
    Version="1">
  <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection>
    <defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
      <taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
        <taskbar:UWA AppUserModelID="Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe!MicrosoftEdge" />
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\System Tools\File Explorer.lnk" />
      </taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
    </defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
 </CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection>
</LayoutModificationTemplate>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

We will need to make some changes as it isn’t perfect. We will start by telling Windows to unpin all the default pinned apps.

To remove all the default pinned apps we need to change <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection> to be <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection PinListPlacement="Replace">

Even though we configure the taskbar XML to replace the default pinned apps this has no impact on the apps the user has pinned, it may move the items to the start of the taskbar if they have them pinned further down but that’s it.

Now we can start adding the pinned apps we want. I like to set them in the following order Microsoft Edge, File Explorer, then Microsoft Outlook.

To pin Microsoft Edge I’m going to replace<taskbar:UWA AppUserModelID="Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe!MicrosoftEdge" /> with <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Edge.lnk"/> As I didn’t want to use the UWA method as I tend to trust file paths more but in theory you could skip this part.

For File Explorer the work is already done in the example taskbar XML so we don’t need to change anything. However this would be what you would need to add for File Explorer <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\System Tools\File Explorer.lnk" />
For Microsoft Outlook we need to add the following <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Outlook.lnk" />

We now have a modified taskbar XML file that looks like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LayoutModificationTemplate
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/LayoutModification"
    xmlns:defaultlayout="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/FullDefaultLayout"
    xmlns:start="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/StartLayout"
    xmlns:taskbar="http://schemas.microsoft.com/Start/2014/TaskbarLayout"
    Version="1">
  <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection PinListPlacement="Replace">
    <defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
      <taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Edge.lnk"/>
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\System Tools\File Explorer.lnk" />
        <taskbar:DesktopApp DesktopApplicationLinkPath="%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Outlook.lnk" />
      </taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
    </defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
  </CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection>
</LayoutModificationTemplate>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

If you wanted to add anything else you can keep adding to it.

Start Menu shortcuts can be found in the following locations. If the shortcut is user profile specific it would show up in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs if the program is system wide the shortcut would show up in %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Once you are all done save the file as an XML file. I’m going to call mine taskbar.xml

Intune Settings

Now we need to configure Intune to deploy the custom taskbar.

Login to Microsoft Intune admin center

Click on Devices

Click on Configuration profiles

Click on Create profile

Set the Platform as Windows 10 and later and set the Profile type as Templates and select Device restrictions

Give your Profile a name. I’m going to call mine Default Taskbar Configuration Profile

Under Start upload the XML file you created earlier.

Select your Assignments

In my setup, I’m going to use the same groups that are used to target the Microsoft Office install which happens when the device is onboarded to Intune so I don’t need to worry about Microsoft Outlook not being installed.