Posted January 2, 2015 by Ronny de Jong .

Blacklist Apps on Windows Phone 8.1 by native Microsoft Intune

First of all happy new year! May it a healthy, be happy and succesfull year to you and yours. Looking forward to new technical developments, challenges and meetig interesting people.

With the December update of Microsoft Intune new policy templates became available which enables you to have more control of your managed mobile devices. One of the new policies is the Windows Phone Configuration Policy template. With the Windows Phone Configuration Policy template you’re able to allow or block apps on Windows Phone 8.1 devices. Policies created from this template can be deployed to both user and device groups and will only applied to devices which are managed by Microsoft Intune.

In this blog I’ll show you how to prevent apps being installed from the Windows Phone Store or disallow the use of already installed apps.

Windows Phone Configuration Policy

In the Intune administration console, click Policy > Add Policy
Select Windows Phone Configuration Policy (Windows Phone 8.1 and later) and click Create Policy

Next we’ll select option Block devices from opening the listed apps.

There are two options to add apps, manually or by bulk import using a CSV file. From the Windows Phone Apps+Games page, search for the app(s) you want to block. Open the app’s page, and copy the URL to the clipboard.

Example: Search the Windows Phone Store for the FlipBoard app. The URL you use will be http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/flipboard/e5723a43-42c8-4e25-b322-115f07bd44f1.

Name: FlipBoard
Publisher: FlipBoard
App URL: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/flipboard/e5723a43-42c8-4e25-b322-115f07bd44f1

Or by selecting a CSV file containing the apps you want to block (example CSV file)

When completed the list of blocked apps save the policy.

When saving you settings you’ll be prompted to deploy this policy as it’s a new policy. Select Yes and deploy this policy whether to users or a devices group.

When received the new policy on my Windows Phone device I’m no longer able to install the blocked apps defined in the policy. For example when searching for FlipBoard in the Windows Phone store I can’t install Flipboard on my phone.