Remote work has made me rethink a lot about the onboarding experience for deploying new endpoints to our internal users. As a director for end-user technology with Citrix IT, I know our team wants to ensure users have the same level of experience as they did when working in the office.
With the growing popularity of macOS, the first question that always comes to mind is how do you get an IT-managed Mac built, secured, and delivered to a remote user. Our solution? Citrix Endpoint Management integration with Apple Business Manager.
Citrix Endpoint Management can seamlessly integrate with Apple Business Manager, which enables our team to proactively make available the resources our users need before the device is ever purchased. Citrix Endpoint Management has helped our team to be much more efficient and provide the best user experience possible, especially in this new hybrid-work model.
How Do We Do It?
At Citrix, we enroll our Macs into Apple Business Manager (ABM), which is integrated with Citrix Endpoint Management. When a user requests a new macOS laptop, it’s shipped directly from our preferred vendor to the user. When the user powers on the device and connects to the internet, it automatically checks into ABM and hands it off to Citrix Endpoint Manager for its approved configuration.
Citrix Endpoint Management automatically applies security and corporate policies to meet corporate IT guidelines as part of this process, such as the automatic implementation of FileVault drive encryption. Once the machine is secured, Citrix Endpoint Management installs all corporate standard apps, and the user is ready to work!
Today, our users don’t need to think about coming to the office to receive their new MacBook and rely on the service desk for configuration assistance. Everything works seamlessly out of the box.
Whether you need to deploy 1 or 1,000 Macs to remote workers, this process works every time and saves a considerable amount of precious IT cycles. Users love the fast turnaround time, from order to arrival to productivity. Another great outcome is the reduction of required IT cycles spent on new builds. Because Citrix Endpoint Management enables a 100 percent self-service Mac build, our team can spend their precious time innovating and improving user experience rather than attending to repetitive computer builds.
To learn more on implementing Apple Business Manager with Citrix Endpoint Management, see our documentation on deploying devices through the Apple Deployment Program and check out our blog on managing macOS devices with Citrix Endpoint Management.
