Create a ready-to-work experience on first boot with Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning Online

Shipping a device to the end user is a pretty easy process, however, provisioning a device in a ready-to-work state can still be a challenge for a lot of organizations today. The experience for users can be severely impacted. Users might need to log in multiple times just to land on the desktop. Once at the desktop, the device may not be secured with the latest security policies and tools necessary to keep the device in a secure state. Even then, users must install the applications they need and wait for all the applications to complete the installation or update process. So, even though shipping a device is a simple process, provisioning can still be a time-consuming, security-concerning, and frustrating process just to get the device to a ready-to-work state so the user can start being productive.

Sure, traditional imaging of a device like the old school days could provide a ready-ish state, where the user just needs to log in. But why create an image only to layer on cloud identity and then call that “modern”? Then, there’s the whole complexity of management and maintenance of the image itself, versions of the operating system and the applications installed BEFORE the user receives the device - only to try and gain some management and security. Devices come pre-loaded with an operating system already, let’s take advantage of this and not layer on additional complexities.

Introducing Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning Online

VMware Workspace ONE® Drop Ship Provisioning™ (Online) Self Registration allows Windows desktop device OEMs and Workspace ONE administrators to provide a virtually zero IT touch onboarding experience with virtually zero user downtime. This means that users are productive as soon as they receive their Windows desktop device—whether working from home or the office!

The device configurations, policies, settings, and applications are preloaded at the factory or by IT. Now, instead of waiting for apps, policies, and settings to download and apply after the users first log in, you can have a ready-to-work experience on the device’s first boot.

Benefits of Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning Online

Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning (Online) with self-registration means that Workspace ONE admins, OEMs, or 3^rd party integrators can provision the devices themselves without the need to maintain the complexity of traditional images. This creates flexibility for organizations that have different types of devices and are provisioned by different vendors while still allowing devices to be provisioned internally if needed, all following the same process.

Yes, this also means that you can on-premises domain join a device externally from the corporate network without the need to expose Active Directory to the internet in order for OEMs or 3^rd parties to “image” that device and join that device to the internal domain.

When a device is provisioned, the most up-to-date set of security policies, profiles, and applications are installed in the device. This means the device is in a secure state and visibility of the device is also achievable before the end user even receives it on their desk.

Let’s look at some of the comparisons to other onboarding methods being used today.

	Microsoft Auto-Pilot	Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning Offline	Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning Online
Pre-install the latest versions of applications			✅
Secured with policies			✅
Auto enroll to MDM	✅	✅	✅
Azure Active Directory domain join	✅	✅
On-premises domain join	⚠️ Support hybrid domain join	✅	✅
Ready-to-work state		✅	✅
Works with multiple OEMs	✅	✅	✅

How does this work?

Workspace ONE UEM uses the Workspace ONE OEM Provisioning Service to store your registered information from the manufacturer and your configurations set in the console. It communicates with your devices ensuring that the devices are provisioned with your desired resources. The workflow to provision devices over the air follows the listed steps.

Enable Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning (Online) in Workspace ONE UEM.
Order your devices and give the manufacturer your Workspace ONE UEM information.
The manufacturer builds your devices and puts the Provisioning Agent on them.
The information from Workspace ONE UEM and the registration information from the manufacturer are stored in the OEM Provisioning Service.
The Workspace ONE UEM scheduler syncs or you manually sync and get registered information from the OEM Provisioning Service. Devices are now listed on the Enrollment Status page in the console.
The manufacturer turns on the device and the Provisioning Agent communicates with the OEM Provisioning Service.
The Provisioning Agent enrolls with Workspace ONE UEM and gets the current profiles, apps, and login configurations.

The device is ready to ship and fully provisioned based on your most current Workspace ONE UEM payload assignments.

How easy is this to set up and configure?

Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning (Online) provides a more dynamic way to assign and provision because you can add and update what you want to be provisioned over the air (OTA). Make changes anytime, and the system stores these changes. They become part of your resource suite for future devices. Resources are assigned to devices using Workspace ONE UEM tags.

Drop Ship Provisioning high-level configuration steps are as simple as:

Enable Drop Ship Provisioning in the Workspace ONE UEM admin console.
Configure Tags in the Workspace ONE UEM console and assign policies, profiles, applications, and configurations.
Order devices with Workspace ONE UEM and Tag information.
Prep devices with the Generic PPKG; register device IDs.
Power Up – Provision - Power down - Ship it.

Done!

In Summary

STOP Imaging – START Provisioning.

Workspace ONE Drop Ship Provisioning (Online) Self-Registration allows Windows desktop device OEMs and Workspace ONE administrators to provide a virtually zero IT touch onboarding experience with virtually zero user downtime. Keep devices up to date with configurations, settings, and applications dynamically over the air. Simplify the process for internal and external provisioning and create a ready-to-work experience on the first boot of the device.

Get started today with Drop Ship Provisioning Online:

For more related resources, explore the following:

VMware Tech Zone:

VMware Docs: