By: Maggie Dakeva, Senior Product Manager - Microsoft Intune
Organizations have spent years refining Windows Autopilot deployments. Profiles, Enrollment Status Page settings, group tags, dynamic gr...
Published Sep 16, 2026
Version 1.0
Blog Post
A lot of the other commenters are correct... this is not what we want. It's not effective at solving any issues we currently face, and it makes most deployment cases more difficult instead of easier.
One of the beautiful things about Autopilot is the fact there's a permanent Entra device object linked to the Autopilot device object which ensures that no matter how many times the device is reset, any group affiliations remain in tact. Leveraging dynamic groups with group tags this way ensures that the devices stay associated with the many divisions in my company and even automates naming conventions should we change group tags. These are missing in the new scenario.
Pretty much the only thing I'd prefer from the original Autopilot system is:
- Task Sequencing so that I can control the order of targeted app installs.
- Better Windows OOBE display to end user during Autopilot so that users know which app is installing instead of just X/Y apps.
Maggie_Dakeva
Microsoft
MicrosoftAaronMHall Could you share more on the deployment cases which are more difficult with this solution? The challenge with the Entra pre-created record is that it's not always reliable and sometimes multiple Entra records may be created and the old one will need to be removed.
I acknowledge that there are scenarios where group tags provides capability that is not easily reproducible via enrollment time grouping if you've built your environment around dynamic groups and group tags. With AP device prep, you should think of the Device preparation policy as the way you configure what group your device would go in. As long as you have that set for your associated device, the device would be going to the right group even after reset. Feel free to add some additional scenarios where you see a challenge and we can see if we have a gap we need to close. It will not be 1:1 the same with group tags, but we still want to make sure your business needs can be achieved.
Could you tell me more about why you need task sequencing for apps? Is it about reliability? Is what you need achievable via app dependencies?