Overview of Windows Autopilot
Windows Autopilot is a collection of technologies used to set up and pre-configure new devices, getting them ready for productive use. You can also use Windows Autopilot to reset, re-purpose 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.
- Windows Autopilot is designed to simplify all parts of the life-cycle of Windows devices, for both IT and end users, from initial deployment through the eventual end of life.
- Leveraging cloud-based services, it can reduce the overall costs for deploying, managing, and retiring devices by reducing the amount of time that IT needs to spend on these processes and the amount of infrastructure that they need to maintain, while ensuring ease of use for all types of end users.
Windows Autopilot enables you to:
- Automatically join devices to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) or Active Directory (via Hybrid Azure AD Join). See Introduction to device management in Azure Active Directory for more information about the differences between these two join options.
- Auto-enroll devices into MDM services, such as Microsoft Intune (Requires an Azure AD Premium subscription for configuration).
- Restrict the Administrator account creation.
- Create and auto-assign devices to configuration groups based on a device’s profile.
Benefits of Windows Autopilot
Traditionally, IT pros spend a lot of time building and customizing images that will later be deployed to devices. Windows Autopilot introduces a new approach. From the user’s perspective, it only takes a few simple operations to make their device ready to use.
From the IT pro’s perspective, the only interaction required from the end user is to connect to a network and to verify their credentials. Everything beyond that is automated.
