Intune - Enrolment Policy - Renaming existing MDM devices??

[Planehazza]

Feel like I'm going crazy, but i'm 99% sure the enrolment polict that sets the device name at enrolment is renaming previously enroled devices.  I thought I saw it happen at the last school and figured I'd bulk renamed the wrong group.

 

Now at the second site, different site prefix and I'm seeing 20 devices checked in with the new prefix. We've only enrolled 14!

 

Why's it doing this? 

 

Edited July 24 by Planehazza

[Planehazza]

Yep, we're not currently enrolling any devices and yet the number is now 25 devices. Why is the naming template on the enrolment profile renaming previously enrolled devices? This is madness, and is going to make it mental to manage the devices.

 

I wonder if I need to set up separate sites per school in ASM then have a token for each so I can have different enrolment polices per site. What a nightmare this is, total garbage

[itskdog]

Is this in the Autopilot settings?

[Mr.Ben]

If you are talking about iPads, then that is expected behaviour. The enrollment policy enforces the name, so you need to have multiple enrollment policies depending upon your naming convention.

[Planehazza]

On 25/07/2026 at 11:06, Mr.Ben said:

If you are talking about iPads, then that is expected behaviour. The enrollment policy enforces the name, so you need to have multiple enrollment policies depending upon your naming convention.

Yep, ipads. I wonder if I've just misunderstood these enrolment policies then. I thought they applied at enrolment and only then? Surely I don't need to have multiple policies for each batch? It's going to be a lot overhead. I have got 600 devices linked in Intune to ASM. Really don't fancy manually assigning a policy one by one.

 

Ans if these policies override names every time ASM and Intune sync, what is the point in a device rename feature MDM side? Or is there a way to remove enrolled devices from the scope of the enrollment profile once they're on boarded? Sorry I'm either just not understanding something here or this is pure madness? 

Edited July 26 by Planehazza

[Mr.Ben]

No, it is pure madness, and not obvious.

 

You either have a choice of:

 

Having a profile per device group (assuming you are happy with using the serial in the name of the device) - this is what I do

 

Or

 

Having a profile that doesn't set the name, which means they are all called iPad on enrollment (and then you rename).

 

Having said that though, you could provision in one profile to ensure a name and joining to the appropriate groups and pick up the appropriate settings, then move it to another profile without the name setting?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 26 by Mr.Ben

[Planehazza]

10 hours ago, Mr.Ben said:

No, it is pure madness, and not obvious.

 

You either have a choice of:

 

Having a profile per device group (assuming you are happy with using the serial in the name of the device) - this is what I do

 

Or

 

Having a profile that doesn't set the name, which means they are all called iPad on enrollment (and then you rename).

 

Having said that though, you could provision in one profile to ensure a name and joining to the appropriate groups and pick up the appropriate settings, then move it to another profile without the name setting?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Ben, and for just validating how I feel with this. It's nuts. I'm already a but miffed with these iPads, as we're rolling out Shared iPad for ALL devices, including KS1. It was my idea as we've no other way of keeping them compliant with KCSIE without relying on teachers to keep track etc. They're going to hate them and me, but we've reminded them how dangerous these are when I've showed them we've averaged an alert a day on the current system, and we don't know who uses which device currently... I'm anxious, but content in my choice.

 

OK, so if you'd be so kind, please hear me out... I can have a single default policy that applies to all the names them say iPad-{{serialnumber}} then add the devices to the Site1-iPad All/Site 2 - iPad Students etc groups to which another policy is set with a different template? Them having Site1 etc in the name isn't crucial; what's crucial is easy, quick software to hardware identification for group assignment. Being shared mode, I can't simply enter a pin to go to Settings > General > about and the serial on the back is tiny. Of course this begs the question of asset management - why don't they have tags on them etc. That's another resource/time question...