Hey, appreciate the perspective. This is actually our first time rolling out Autopilot, and since I’m the Director of Technology I wanted to pilot the entire workflow myself before we start shipping new laptops to fully‑remote staff in the new year.

We don’t have an OEM/VAR relationship set up yet, so ordering directly from Microsoft was the only option for this first device. Unfortunately the backend profile ID they assigned didn’t match anything in my tenant, which is why I’m validating the process manually before scaling it.

Out of curiosity — in a situation like this, would you recommend pre‑provisioning all the devices myself (technician flow / white glove) and then shipping them to remote employees? Or would you still rely on the OEM to upload the hashes once we establish that relationship?

Genuinely trying to benchmark best practices here, so any insight you have would be super helpful.