Here are my favorite topics, questions, and answers from the Microsoft AMA (Ask Me Anything) Windows Autopilot session on July 21, 2022. The recording from this live presentation as well as earlier AMA sessions is available on the main Windows IT Pro YouTube channel, and here is a direct link to the AMA Autopilot session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDou_I6saQ.
The AMA was presented by Joe Lurie who is a deployment, identity, and management specialist on the MEM team, Danny Guillory Jr who is a senior program manager on the MEM team, and Juanita Baptiste who is the product owner for Windows Autopilot on the MEM team. In addition to the presenters on camera, there were also a few Microsoft engineers joining the AMA answering questions. Noticably Jason Sandys, Hung Dang, and Max Stein. The full list of questions and anwers are here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-endpoint-manager/ama-enrolling-modern-devices-with-windows-autopilot/ec-p/3547813#M446.
Highlights from the AMA session
Here are my favorite topics, questions, and answers from the session:
- Last year Microsoft removed some Autopilot features related to sign-in and deployment experience due to security concerns, these changes were documented here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/intune-customer-success/updates-to-the-windows-autopilot-sign-in-and-deployment/ba-p/2848452. During the session Microsoft announced that these features are coming back, with improved algorithms, some already this week, and will be backported to all supported versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11.
- Question: Are there any plans on supporting regional settings and time zone settings in Autopilot? Answer from Juanita: This is pretty common request, and it is something Microsoft is looking into, at least from an automated point of view based on location data, etc. No ETA as of now, but it's being looked into.
- Question: Is it possible to insert a custom schema for device naming? Answer from Juanita: It's also a common request, and it is something Microsoft is looking into improving. However, you can leverage scripting today to assign custom names, for example, to match certificate subject names, etc.
- Danny shared some info on the Windows Autopilot with Co-Management feature released earlier this year. Mentioning the Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) requirement and that it controls the authority between Intune and ConfigMgr with Autopilot. The feature addresses the so-called flip/flop scenario, where Intune would own all workload initially, then ConfigMgr would own all workloads, but now you can control that behavior.
- Question: What about security updates and driver updates during Autopilot? Answer from Juanita: We currently don't have a method to do this in Intune, but driver updates are something that we are looking into but with that line of thinking it would mostly be for IT pros to apply updates during the device lifecycle.
- Juanita shared some info on an upcoming auto-remediation feature that will be used to address motherboard replacement scenarios. This feature is coming in Intune service release 2207. She mentioned the recommendation to de-register devices from Autopilot that you will no longer be using or for devices you plan to sell to other organizations, donate to charity, etc. She also mentioned that de-registering devices is currently not super simple per se but will be easier soon.
- Max posted the link to the Microsoft Intune feedback portal where you can request new features and vote on existing requests: https://aka.ms/IntuneFeedback.
- Joe mentioned the correct spelling for Autopilot, one word, capital A, lowercase p. 🙂
- Question: What about improving the stability of the Autopilot service? Hung answered that this is definitely something Microsoft is working on, and that keeping things simple, like deploying just a few apps during enrollment, increases the success rate. He also mentioned that the Autopilot flow is a very complex one involving many components.
- The team also shared a link to a guide Autopilot simulation: https://aka.ms/GetToKnowAutopilot
That's all for now, happy deployments,
/ Johan
They took away the ability to do multiple resets of pre-provisioning and self-deploying mode
Starting this week, these features are being restored depending on OEM
Auto-remediation