Automate Enrollment of Windows 10 devices with Windows Autopilot

Overview

Though MDM provides various bulk enrollment methods, it still is a cumbersome task for the administrators or the device users to manually activate the device, before actually using it. Windows Autopilot lets you configure the initial device setup, by choosing to skip all of the initial setup steps or a few of them, effectively making it the Windows equivalent of Apple Device Enrollment Program.

Pre-requisites

Steps for configuring Windows Autopilot

Step #1: Create an AutoPilot profile

The first step is to create an AutoPilot profile, which will be associated to the devices. To create the profile, follow the steps given below

Step #2: Obtain device details

You need to obtain device details, which is then to be uploaded as explained in Step #3. This data is usually available with the resellers or if you want to add details yourself, you can obtain this data as explained below:

Step #3: Upload device details

The next step is to upload the device details and associate the profile created in Step #2. To do that, follow the steps given below:

Step #3.1 (Optional): Branding the device activation screen

In addition to skipping the initial setup screens, you can also choose to optionally personalize the device activation screens to display the organization name and/or logo. To do that, follow the below given steps:

Step #4: Assign Users

The devices can either be enrolled by the users themselves or enrolled by the Admin and then assign it to the corresponding user. Now, you need to assign users to these enrolled device, to complete enrollment. Additionally, you can also add devices to multiple groups to automate the distribution of apps, profiles and documents to devices. To do that, follow the steps given below:

Sample CSV

SERIAL_NUMBER,USER_NAME,DOMAIN_NAME,EMAIL_ADDRESS,GROUP_NAME      

C07Q853LG9RM,ANDREW,,andrew@zylker.com,zylker_drivers

NOTE

  1. The fields Serial Number, User Name, Email Address and Group Name are mandatory. All the other fields are optional. Ensure the specified group name is already created in the MDM server. If values are not provided, default values will be taken.
  2. The default values for various non-mandatory fields are: 
    Domain Name -- MDM
    Owned By -- Corporate
  3. If multiple groups are specified, the group names must be separated with a slash (/)
  4. The first line of the CSV is the column header and the columns can be in any order.
  5. Blank column values should be comma separated.
  6. If the column value contains comma, it should be specified within quotes.

Click here to know more about the ports required for managing mobile devices.

What happens on the device?

During device activation, you need to configure Wi-Fi settings, region and Keyboard settings after which the device will show the following screen:

The device restarts, after which the user is prompted to specify AD credentials. Once done, the device gets enrolled with MDM, after which users are to be assigned to the enrolled devices as explained here.

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