Auto Deployment

Auto Deployment, or shortened Auto Deploy, is a setting that controls whether unmanaged applications detected on managed devices which have a corresponding application in our public repository should be automatically deployed so that the unmanaged application becomes a managed application. This setting is disabled by default, and for subscriptions managed by an MSP the default setting is to inherit the setting value from the MSP-level configuration. 

Auto Deployment is currently only available for Windows applications, however, support for macOS applications is planned and coming soon. 

You can configure this setting by accessing the Deployment Automation page inside the Application Management section of the Endpoint Admin portal, as with Auto Smart Patching. 

To access the Deployment Automation page, find Application Management in the sidebar of the portal, expand it and click on the Deployment Automation entry: 

From here you can either change the MSP-level setting and the subscription-level setting for your current subscription, if you are an MSP user, or if you are a non-MSP user you can only change the subscription-level setting for your current subscription: 

Pictured above is the subscription-level setting. Below is the U.I. for the MSP-level setting:

Auto Deployment will start as soon as it is enabled, however, subsequent Auto Deployments will occur automatically every day at 11 PM UTC.

Detection and Deployment

As with Smart Patching the AppInvRawData report is used to catalogue all application instances, comparing our detection name of each public application with the application names given by the report, and then by comparing the applications list in Intune to this to figure out whether the application is managed or unmanaged. The AppInstallStatusAggregate intune report is used as the Intune managed applications list. Any application that isn’t deployed in Intune and can be found in the AppInvRawData report will be considered to be unmanaged. We further distinguish between EA Managed Applications and Managed Applications, based on whether we can detect that the Intune application matches a deployed EA application in any repository. 

When an unmanaged application instance that matches the detection name of a public application is detected, then the corresponding public application is automatically deployed to Intune. 

The detection and deployment occurs every day at 11 PM UTC.

Integration with Auto Smart Patching 

If Auto Smart Patching is enabled for the subscription in which Auto Deployment is deploying an application, then the Smart Patching deployment strategy will be used. The Auto Smart Patch deployment schedule will be created if it does not exist, and it will be assigned to the application being deployed. The Auto Smart Patch deployment schedule for the application will then be started, deploying the Patch Application instance first and then the Base Application instance after the Auto Smart Patch deployment schedule has finished all its deployment phases, this is typically only 1 phase (the Smart Patch Phase) unless this deployment schedule has been customized by the end-user. 

If Auto Smart Patching is not enabled, then only Base Application instances will be deployed. The end-user must then as with any base application, configure the base application assignments on the application before this becomes useful. Therefore, it is recommended to enable Auto Smart Patching when using this feature. 

Auto Deployment Application Exclusions 

As with Smart Patching, applications can be excluded from being automatically deployed. Exclusions can be configured both on the MSP and the subscription level. 

Pictured above is the current list of apps that can be excluded and their exclusion state seen from an MSP’s point of view. Excluded apps will always appear at the top of the list. In the picture, iTunes is marked as excluded as it has the checkbox in the first column checked off. This means that the iTunes app will not be automatically deployed on any managed subscription, unless an explicit subscription-level setting overrides the MSP configuration.