How to troubleshoot issues with the Intune Company Portal app
The Company Portal app controls access to critical business resources, so IT administrators should try to fix any issues with this app quickly and effectively.
Many organizations use Microsoft Intune as part of their endpoint management strategy, and an important component of that platform is the Company Portal app.
The Company Portal app provides users with insights about their devices and apps -- all the user's managed devices are visible in the app, including their compliance status. It's the go-to location for the user for anything related to the management of their device and their apps.
As such, it's critical for Intune administrators to have access to the Company Portal and for it to be fully operational from a compliance, management and oversight perspective.
The role of the Intune Company Portal app
It's important to distinguish the different versions -- there is the Company Portal website and the Company Portal app.
Company Portal website
This provides the user with the ability to remotely manage their enrolled devices and work apps. That website is accessible on any device by signing in with a work account. After signing in, the user has the ability to perform different available remote actions on their devices, such as checking the status, remotely locking the device and viewing the available apps. It also provides the user with insights about the compliance status of all the available enrolled devices.
Company Portal app
The app itself is the most common instance of the Company Portal and is available via the app store on the supported platforms. In addition, on corporate-owned devices, the Company Portal app is often installed as part of the enrollment process. The app provides the user with access to all their enrolled and managed devices, including all the available remote actions. It also provides the user with a clear overview of the available apps for the current device and insights about the compliance status of all devices. That includes the ability to directly remediate potential device compliance issues.
Within Microsoft Intune, the Company Portal app is an important component of the complete device management platform. It provides the user with direct insights and is an essential aspect of personal devices. For personal devices, the Company Portal app is also the easiest method to facilitate enrollment with Intune and control managed apps on platforms such as Android.
The Company Portal app handles essential code for making sure that IT administrators can manage the different apps and corporate resources when relying on conditional access.
Troubleshooting basic issues with the Company Portal app
While the Company Portal app is used in many organizations, it is not a strictly required component on most platforms and in most scenarios. The Company Portal app is only required for device enrollment and accessing corporate resources via a managed app. That could include the enrollment of personally owned Android devices, for example.
While the Company Portal app is in use in many organizations, it is not a strictly required component on most platforms and in most scenarios.
In other scenarios on corporate-owned devices, the Company Portal app is not strictly required to manage the device itself. But it can be difficult to manage devices without the app, as it provides IT with insights over managed devices and available apps. Either way, there will always be a small percentage of failures within the environment, and not all of those failures will be visible to the IT administrator.
Initial Company Portal app sign-in issues
If a user can't sign in, they have problems with signing in to the Company Portal app. Problems can come about via the users themselves or by a misconfiguration from IT, and the easiest way to determine this is the type of error message. When the problem is with the users themselves, they will receive a message such as "Your account or password is incorrect. If you don't remember your password … " when a wrong username or password is used, and "Request denied" when multifactor authentication fails. These are all issues that users can typically address themselves, as it comes down to providing the correct sign-in information.
When the user successfully signs into the Company Portal app, there are different error messages that can occur when there is something wrong with configuration. In that case, the user will receive a message such as "Your IT admin hasn't given you access to use this app" when there is no license assigned to the user, or "Looks like your IT admin hasn't set an MDM authority" when there is no MDM authority configured within the Intune environment. IT administrators can address these issues by configuring the basics of the Microsoft Intune tenant.
Intune Company Portal app general issues
The user, however, might also face more broad issues with the application. For example, the Company Portal app might have problems connecting to Microsoft Intune. In that case, the user will receive a message such as "Error loading devices" or "Error loading apps" when opening the app. Depending on the location of the user, this is also something that the user can address. Admins should help users determine the source of the connection problems by methodically eliminating potential causes.
The user can also encounter issues with crashes of the Company Portal app, which is harder to troubleshoot. When Intune admins have time to look into the issue, they can start with investigating the Event Viewer. Sometimes the easiest fix is just to reinstall the Company Portal app.
Something similar is applicable when the user receives the message "Company Portal Temporarily Unavailable." That message most often indicates that the currently installed version of the app is outdated or corrupted. In that case, generally speaking, the easiest fix is to reinstall the Company Portal app.
Peter van der Woude works as a mobility consultant and knows the ins and outs of the ConfigMgr and Microsoft Intune tools. He is a Microsoft MVP and a Windows expert as well.
