- Rename a device using Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center Portal
- End User Experience
- Rename a device from the Device
- Conclusion
You can easily rename a device which is enrolled in Intune. When you take this action, device name is changed In Intune and also device name is changed on that device as well. There are many use cases for this option, for example you have used autopilot on all your machines which sets the hostnames and you want to set a different hostname on few of the machines or you could have few machines which are being used for some special purpose e.g. Processing Batch Jobs or Running Specific Applications and you would want to reflect the same in the name of the machines and easily identify from Endpoint Manager Admin Center.
Currently you can rename following type of devices (Source:Microsoft)
- Android Enterprise:
- Corporate-owned work profiles
- Dedicated devices
- Fully managed
- iOS/iPadOS supervised devices with iOS 9.3 and later
- macOS 10 – Corporate-owned devices
- Windows – Corporate-owned devices
- Corporate-owned co-managed devices that are Azure AD joined.
There are three ways to rename a device. You can either rename a device from the device itself or via Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center or Using Azure Active Directory via Microsoft Azure Portal. The way you choose to rename a device is upto you. I have tested all three scenarios and all of the ways works without any issues. The device rename should take approximately 15-20 minutes but the device name sync could take longer depending upon the sync interval between your PC and Microsoft Azure Active Directory / Intune Portal.
Rename a device using Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center Portal
For renaming a device from Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center, you will need to login on it using Admin Credentials and follow below steps:
From Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center browse to Devices and then select All Devices.
Search for the device which you want to rename and click on device Link to manage.
After you click on the device, you will be able to manage it and should be able to see a lot more information about the device for example: Device serial number, Primary User, Operating System etc. Also you will be able to see several options to manage the device like Retire, Wipe, Delete etc. You can click on three dots and then select Rename device option to Rename this device. Make sure that the number of characters should 15 or less. There are other conditions as well which are listed below:
Device Rename guidelines:
- 15 characters or less
- Letters (a-z, A-Z), numbers (0-9), and hyphens. Names must not contain only numbers.
- No spaces or special characters.
Tokens can be used to add device-specific values to the name:
- Add {{serialnumber}} to add the device’s serial number to the name
- Add {{rand:x}} to add a random string of numbers, where x equals the number of digits to add.
Enter a new name of the device. In my case. I am simply adding additional character into the name of my desktop and making sure total number of characters are not more than 15 along with following other guidelines. I will be selecting Restart after rename which is must for renaming a device. You can select No to skip device restart after rename operation and later point of time you can manually restart the device yourself.
Restart has been initiated.
End User Experience
After the rename operation which also Restarts the machine, In couple of minutes you will see a pop up message box as shown in below screenshot. In my case if took few seconds to get this message.
You are about to be signed out and you will get around 2 minutes more before the restart of the device will start.
Notification of the Device restart.
Device Restarted.
After the restart has been completed, We can see the new device hostname in below screenshot.
Rename a device from the Device
You can also rename a device from the device and when the next Intune sync runs, your new device name will be updated in Microsoft Azure Active Directory and thereafter on the Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin center.
I have tested this scenario and it works without any issues. It took around 10-15 minutes to reflect the new name in the Microsoft Active Directory under devices and then it take a little bit more time to show the new name on Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center.
After you rename the device from the Device itself, You can restart your PC and wait for the next Intune Sync cycle or you can also click on Sync button to force initiate a Sync from your device to the Azure Portal. You can find this button by going to Settings-> Accounts -> Access work or School -> Select your account and click on Info button. Scroll down on the page to see Device sync status -> Sync.
Conclusion
Renaming operating from device or Microsoft Endpoint Manager Admin Center or from Devices Under Azure Active Directory is very easy and fast. It takes couple of minutes rename the device. However the new device name update on the Portals may take some time so please be patient and wait for the sync cycle to complete. Azure Active Directory may reflect the new device name quicker than Intune portal.
