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Recent joined a new organization and discovered that there are Android, iOS, and ChromeOS devices all over the place, but the accounts used on them are also all over the place. Some people are using personal accounts, some are using a shared account under an old work email, some are using individual accounts that are not managed and may or may not remember the password to get into them!

There was an MFA project that got started prior to my time, but just getting that rolled out has been a pain because people either don’t know their account or don’t have one. I would love to be able to just let people use their domain logins to get into the App store or Play store! Why an account is required just to download a free app is beyond me.
So, any recommendations on how to centralize mobile device accounts? Is there an easy solution, or should I start planning out a paid MDM solution? We already have Microsoft 365, but I do not think it includes MDM in the license.

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MDM is part of the answer - this will gain control of the devices and allow central configuraiton.

But user accounts / identity management is more complex. You need to know what you want to achieve.
For example on phones via MDM you could have the mdm ‘purchase’ the app from the store which will use a central account, the user does not necessarily need a apple or google ID - but can use a personal one, or company created and managed one.

As a starting point I would recommend an mdm that links device to user using the company email address (and possibly m365/azureAD account). Everyone will have unique login/passcodes etc, recovery via the MDM etc. Then you can use the mdm to deploy Office 365 apps and configure them automatically.

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@m@ttshaw​

How do people do this with creating accounts??

I’m in the same situation except the phones have all been given out and must become centrally managed.

One way I know things are done is to have one central account to which all the iPhone accounts are aliased to the central account and each alias is used for signing up a phone…??

I know there’s Apple Business Manager which apparently creates Apple accounts for MDM but this is all I know right now…

We are on M365 Business Basic/Premium depending on the user…we do have Intune but I am considering ManageEngine, I asked about them in another post.

Thank you, Tom

@matt7863