Microsoft announced in January, that they would allow enterprises to identify corporate-owned devices (vs. personal/BYO) via importing IMEI information. Typically this IMEI information is gathered from the carriers/distributors at time of purchase, so organizations can pre-populate/identify personal vs. corp devices. This can be used for applying policies that are different than those applied to personally owned devices.

Previously, there were only 3 ways to enroll or identify corporate-owned devices

1. Device Enrollment Program (DEP) device enrollment – Deploys an enrollment profile “over the air” that includes setup assistant options for the device. Devices enrolled through DEP cannot be un-enrolled by users.
2. Apple Configurator enrollment via Setup Assistant – Factory resets the device using Apple Configurator, enrolls the device, and prepares it with Setup Assistant options.
3. Apple Configurator enrollment via Direct Enrollment – Creates an Apple Configurator-compliant file for use during device preparation via Apple Configurator. The enrolled device isn’t factory reset. This method only works if user affiliation is set to “No user affinity.”

To configure this, you can either upload a CSV file or manually enter the IMEI information. For reasons of scale and convenience, we’ll assume you’ll want to do the former.

To import the IMEI information, go to Groups > All Devices > All Corporate Pre-enrolled Devices > By IMEI (All platforms)

Click Add devices…. And choose the CSV file containing the serial numbers with NO header.

Your CSV file should look something like this:

NOTE: There is a limit of 5000 devices or 5MB per CSV file

Choose Next to import the file

When the device with that IMEI number enrolls, the device will be tagged as Corporate owned and appear as enrolled in the IMEI Devices group.