How to Get Started with Autopilot
Successful device management starts with planning. For example, “because Autopilot will use groups of devices normally divided in some logical order, a plan to name devices in a uniform way will streamline configuration,” Johnson says.
From there, some basic first steps include migrating identities to the cloud using Microsoft Entra ID, setting up your Microsoft 365 tenant, enrolling devices using Autopilot, and then deploying apps and policies using Microsoft Intune, she said.
Dass suggested it is helpful to engage diverse stakeholders in establishing the baselines that Autopilot will help to implement.
“We have engineering, we have STEM, we have humanities, we have different groups with different needs and expectations. We need to make sure that everybody has input into what they get,” Dass says.
“We spent a year with a group from all over campus working on our security standards and our security profiles, these baseline security configurations — from logging to virus and malware protection, and so on,” he says.
Optimizing Windows Autopilot for Higher Education
To best secure the learning experience, it makes sense to fine-tune Autopilot to meet a school’s specific needs, Johnson says.
For example, “a device naming convention that easily delineates one unique group compared to another will allow different groups to not only easily identify devices with different use cases but also simplify role-based administration on these groups of devices,” she says.
It’s also helpful to customize deployments with Autopilot; for example, by preloading Adobe for art students. “We have a computer-based testing facility, and we have a very limited catalog of what goes in that image so that we can make it a true testing computer versus a regular day-to-day computer,” Dass said.
With these and other capabilities, Autopilot empowers IT teams to deploy, secure and maintain devices more effectively. It can free up staff to focus on higher-value tasks while delivering an improved experience across the full range of university user groups.
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