Intelligence Use Case: Automated Device Lifecycle Management
Welcome to part 2 of this blog series which will cover the Top 10 Mobile Device Use Cases for Workspace ONE Intelligence. Use cases 1 to 4 cover IT operations and quality of life improvement. Next up is use case #2, Automated Device Lifecycle Management.
Automated Device Lifecycle Management
This is one of the most popular use cases with my clients and one of the first things configured in their environment. Over time, some enrolled devices stop communicating with Workspace ONE UEM console for several reasons. It can be because they are lost, powered off in a random drawer or cabinet somewhere, or improperly unenrolled. Whatever the reasons may be, you could see hundreds of thousands of these stale device records if you let them go long enough.
This can cause challenges with reporting and licensing. And, although you might be able to manually delete these records through the Workspace ONE UEM console user interface, or through an API script, it can be tedious and time-consuming or require you to code.
Intelligence Automation Engine
The Workspace ONE Intelligence Automation Engine can solve this problem very easily in an automated, no-code manner. The following screenshot shows an example of how you can set up your automation to manage devices not checking in.
Figure: Workflow for devices not seen within 7 days with user notification through email and Slack
In the example above, we are addressing devices not seen for more than seven days. We set up actions to send out a Slack notification and email to end-users, asking them to turn the device on, connect to the internet, and open Intelligent Hub application to send the beacon back to UEM console. We just kindly check in with the users in case they are on a vacation and turn their corporate devices off.
This is what it looks like on Slack when the notification is sent to the user.
Figure: Slack message when the workflow is triggered
One small thing to note is that we are dynamically assigning values based on the lookup values specified in the template. T’s iPad is the friendly name of the device in this scenario, and it is reflected properly in the Slack message.
Aside from sending Slack messages and emails, if you are using a different communication tools like Microsoft Teams, we can also integrate with them through Workspace ONE Intelligence Custom Connector to send communication to a group or a user. You can explore and download the Custom Connector sample for Microsoft Teams to use in your environment.
Automate Device Cleanup
Another example here shows us how we can automate the device cleanup process with Intelligence Workflow after devices have not checked in for more than 28 days. In this case, we decide to send the user a Slack message and an email and proceed to delete the devices off the console.
Figure: Automation workflow for devices not seen within 28 days with user notification and device deletion
Of course, these settings are all flexible and you can further customize them based on your organization's needs and policies. For example, if you would like to make sure your executive devices are exempt from being removed from the environment, you can update your filter to exclude devices from the Executive Devices Organization Group, as in the following screenshot.
Figure: Automation workflow for devices not seen within 28 days, excluding executives’ devices
Next
That wraps up our second use case. Stay tuned for the next post in this series, Intelligence Use Case: Automated Remediation Process for Critical Resources.
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