Intune Autopilot – Sharing the love – Part 1

Over the last 18 months, I've had great success deploying modern-managed devices for clients, using a mix of Azure Active Directory, Intune and Autopilot. Autopilot has always worked great in scenarios where one user = one workstation, but what about a replacement for that traditional domain-joined PC which you would deploy for shift workers or in multi-user situations where one computer = 5 users?

There are a few ways that I have found a multi-user device can be set-up, but these all have drawbacks.

Build a PC then AAD join it:

On the face of it, this seems like the most straightforward option. The PC can be AAD joined and added into AAD Device groups to receive policies. However, the drawback with this approach is that the machine will be listed in AAD as a device under the user that AAD joined it. This can lead to admin accounts with tens of devices listed under them and a potential requirement to lift the "per user device limit" within AAD.

It's also a royal pain in the backside to have to assign group memberships manually, and policy application appears to be a little spotty the moment you transition to a standard user.

SharedPC CSP

Microsoft has thought of this and created a SharedPC CSP policy. SharedPC CSP comes with several advantages such as Guest account Management, Local Storage Policies, Power Policies, Fast first sign-in and Education Policies, all of which make management and sign-in much easier. But for me, this CSP has one critical flaw - it disables the OneDrive client completely!!

If like me, you've been encouraging people to take advantage included 1TB OneDrive space per user in Office 365, then you've probably migrated users' documents to OneDrive and are using policies such as KFM (known folder move). OneDrive client is critical to a Shared PC; otherwise, users will are forced to use OneDrive online to access their documents. It also gives no easy way to roam documents between shared PCs, for example at a reception desk with two seats.

So, how do we deploy an Intune Autopilot device for multiple users with all of our usual Line of Business apps?

The answer is Intune Self-Deploying Mode but without SharedPC CSP!!

What, I hear you cry, that sounds counter-intuitive, but it works. We'll let the self-deploying mode take care of our AAD join and then layer some custom Policies on top to cover the other bits.

The self-deploying mode requires adding another Autopilot deployment profile, which means you must make some changes to your existing autopilot configuration. In Part 2, I'll go into the changes that you need to make to prepare your environment for multiple deployment profiles.