Chromebooks: Auto Enrollment is going away for brand new devices

EDIT: See updated blog post regarding some items in this blog post.

I'll have plenty more posts about this topic and enrollment later but I wanted to get the word out that there will be no more Automatic Enrollment for brand new Chromebooks. I found this out yesterday and started a panicky thread on the Chromebook EDU Google+ Community lol.

Before I go into this, it appears that not everyone was even using Automatic Enrollment like we were and like we PLANNED to for our shipment of 2,500 Chromebooks this summer.

What we did/planned to do for new shipments

1. Worked with a few different vendors to get Chromebooks over the past 2 years, they sent the serial numbers to Google and Google "ingested" them into our console (or at least this was my basic understanding). At that time I saw them in our console - nice! Now, they are ready for Automatic Enrollment.
2. This means that anyone can log in with an account from our domain (we forced them to use our domain) and enroll the device. Woo! Easy!
3. We set up an account for each school, so when they enrolled the device it would go into the OU that the user was in. So, they automatically enrolled, automatically put that username in the user field and moved it into the school's OU. Sweet!
4. This also was a catch all for anyone who purchased Chromebooks and logged in - it'd still enroll them. If they had to manually enroll..they would have had NO idea to press the key combo.

The only way a Chromebook could have been ready for Automatic Enrollment on a brand new device was if Google ingested the serial numbers and populated them into your admin console. Google is no longer doing this--therefore no more Automatic Enrollment on brand new devices (OOBE).

What this means for us

• This takes away Automatic placement of devices upon enrollment (see step #3 above). Even though that setting is still in the Device Settings page right now.
• What I have also noticed is it will NOT auto populate the username in the user field upon enrollment (or any enrollment). (see step #3).
• We now have to hit the 3 key combo for manual enrollment. We could live with this if this was the only change. But it will take more time, more variables to make mistakes when we do our own "white glove" service this summer and most importantly any new Chromebooks, the person [at about 17 different buildings who order them a lot of different ways] has to remember to hit the 3 key combo. Yeah right. (see step #4)

Bottom Line
We were all set to use Automatic Enrollment and had a great plan for the Summer. We just found out we need to totally re-do this plan. Also, media people at schools need to be re-taught to hit the 3 key combo to enroll devices. Yes, we will be fine, yes Chromebooks still rule, yes I'm glad we chose them for our main device..but it's alarming and frustrating that it seems like they are taking away things, taking steps back.

I have a few other things regarding this topic but I want to do more testing before I write more in case I haven't looked deep enough into it. I'm also looking into the differences between devices that are already enrolled (and if it's before version 35 or not) and new ones.

Take a few minutes to read:

• Force devices to enroll (Google blog post)
• Enroll Devices (look at forced re-enrollment and automatic enrollment sections)
• Thread about this topic

EDIT: See updated blog post regarding some items in this blog post.