3 KEY Questions You Should Know About Windows AutoPilot!
According to Microsoft, “Windows AutoPilot is a collection of technologies used to set up and pre-configure new devices, getting them ready for productive use. In addition, you can use Windows AutoPilot to reset, repurpose and recover devices. This solution enables an IT department to achieve the above with little to no infrastructure to manage, with a process that’s easy and simple.”
The keyword in the above paragraph is process. This is important to keep in mind when continue to read below.
Windows AutoPilot is NOT:
? A deployment tool (!!!)
? Not a replacement for ConfigMgr
Windows AutoPilot IS:
? A process – not a product
? A way of getting a Windows 10 device under Modern Management
? A way of delivering a Windows 10 device to the end-user without imaging.
AutoPilot in Action shown below:
3 important Questions you should know before committing to Windows AutoPilot!!
- What are the Prerequisites for AutoPilot?
- Which Hardware Vendor supports AutoPilot?
- How to Get Device ID for Windows Auto Pilot?
You need to ensure that you are ready with all prerequisites of Windows AutoPilot. Once all the prerequisites are prepared, you can start your LAB or PoC testing of this. Proxy and Firewall are requirements critical if you are planning to do PoC from your office network.
- Devices must be registered to the organization
- Company branding needs to be configured
- Network connectivity to cloud services used by Windows Autopilot
- Devices have to be pre-installed with Windows 10 Professional, Enterprise or Education, of version 1703 or later
- Devices must have access to the internet
- Azure AD Premium P1 or P2
- Users must be allowed to join devices into Azure AD
- Microsoft Intune or other MDM services to manage your devices
Microsoft is working with many vendors to onboard them into Windows AutoPilot process. These brands ship devices using Windows Autopilot. When you purchase from them, your employees will receive devices ready to go, just by signing in — requiring no help from IT.
Panasonic, Acer, and more coming soon!
You can log in to a Windows 7 or Windows 10 device and run the PowerShell script provided by Microsoft to get the device ID, hardware hash and other details required. Also, you can automate this process to Azure Run-book Automation.
- Get hardware ID details from the vendor
- Use PowerShell script to get the hardware details
- Use ORDER ID field to automate Autopilot profile assignment
- Azure Run-book to provision Windows 7 machines
- PowerShell Command =>.\Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo.ps1 -OutputFile .\MyComputer.csv
This article is inspired by Anoop C Nair's Blog. If this topic is of your interest I encourage you to read an excellent article written by Anoop on this topic here - LINK
Cheers,
Susanth
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Expert in SaaS Customer Onboarding | Product Implementation | Product Management | Product Sales | Customer Success | Product Support | Technical Account Management
4 年Awesome !
Sr General Manager - Partner Sales at Ingram Micro NZ
6 年After seeing this process first hand, the value is huge. The partners that embrace this process will pass on greater value to their customers and will ultimately give a better, lower risk end user experience.? In true quality business devices, like HP Elite, "bloatware" is non-existent and the "blast a new image" approach adds time, cost and driver reliability risk. Some great OEM user experience and security optimization applications get overlooked too. This is why I love what the process Autopilot brings, it builds from the base of a quality business device and crafts it what the end Business and User needs.