How to Manage Laptops Remotely with Intune: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re responsible for IT in a company with remote employees, or even a few hybrid team members, you already know the struggle.

New hires need their laptops prepped and shipped. Everyone needs the right apps, the latest updates, and security locked down. And when someone leaves? You’re scrambling to wipe the device before it walks out the (virtual) door.

That’s where Microsoft Intune comes in.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to manage laptops remotely with Intune, from the initial setup to day-to-day management. Whether you’re an IT admin rolling this out for the first time or a founder trying to wrangle your team’s tech, you’ll walk away knowing:

• What Intune actually does (and doesn’t do)
• How to enroll and manage laptops remotely
• How to handle apps, updates, and security policies without babysitting devices
• How to automate onboarding and offboarding

Let’s dive in.

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Why Use Intune for Remote Laptop Management?

Remote and hybrid work has turned IT into a logistical nightmare. You’re no longer just setting up laptops in the office, you’re shipping them to 3 different time zones, making sure they’re secure, and praying updates actually install.

Intune takes care of most of that by giving you one central dashboard to manage every company device, no matter where it is. With Intune, you can:

• Remotely push apps and updates (no more “Hey, can you install Zoom yourself?” emails).
• Enforce security automatically: passwords, antivirus, encryption, all without nagging people.
• Lock, wipe, or retire laptops when they’re lost, stolen, or when employees leave.
• See every device’s health and compliance at a glance.
• Save time by automating repetitive IT tasks.

Put simply, Intune lets you manage a laptop in New York while sitting at a coffee shop in London, without shipping it back and forth or setting up endless remote sessions.

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The Step-by-Step Guide: How to Manage Laptops Remotely with Intune

Let’s break down the entire process into 8 simple, practical steps.

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Step 1: Set Up Your Intune Environment

Before you touch a single laptop, you need your Intune account ready.

1. Make sure you have one of these plans:
   • Microsoft 365 Business Premium
   • Microsoft 365 E3/E5
   • Or a standalone Intune license.
2. Sign in to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center:
3. Go to Tenant Administration → Intune and follow the guided setup.
4. Verify your company domain so employees can sign in using their work accounts.

Pro tip: Think of this like setting up a “control tower” for all your laptops. Get this right before bringing devices on board.

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Step 2: Enroll Laptops into Intune

Enrollment is how you “claim” a laptop for remote management. There are three main ways to do it, but here’s the most common:

1. On the laptop, go to:
   Settings → Accounts → Access work or school → Connect.
2. Sign in with the employee’s work account.
3. Choose Join this device to Azure Active Directory.
4. The device will automatically appear in Intune.

If you’re shipping new laptops, use Windows Autopilot so employees can open the box, sign in, and watch everything set itself up (apps, policies, the works).

Pro tip: Always create a step-by-step PDF guide for employees so they don’t get lost during enrollment.

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Step 3: Organize Devices into Logical Groups

Managing all laptops as “one big pile” is chaos. Instead, group them based on:

• Department: Sales, Engineering, Finance
• Location: US, UK, Remote, Contractors
• Device type: Standard user vs. Admin, or corporate-owned vs. BYOD

Why? Because you’ll want different policies for a developer’s laptop (maybe allowing local admin rights) versus a marketing intern’s machine.

How to do it:

• In Intune, go to Groups → New group → Assign devices.
• Use dynamic groups to automatically add new devices based on rules (like OS or department).

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Step 4: Create and Apply Security Policies

Here’s where you protect your company from the biggest risks, accidental leaks, lost laptops, and malware.

Some must-have Intune policies:

• BitLocker encryption: Encrypt every drive so stolen laptops don’t leak data.
• Password rules: Force strong passwords and auto-lock after inactivity.
• Antivirus checks: Require Windows Defender to be active and up-to-date.
• USB blocking (optional): Stop users from copying sensitive files to flash drives.
• Compliance rules: Devices must meet these requirements to access company data.

How:

• Go to Endpoint Security → Create Policy → Windows 10/11.
• Select each configuration, then assign to your groups.

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Step 5: Deploy and Manage Apps

Instead of asking each employee to install the tools they need, Intune can push apps automatically.

Options:

1. Upload your own installers (MSI or EXE).
2. Deploy Microsoft Store apps (like Teams, OneDrive).
3. Push Office 365 apps with a single click.

Steps:

• In Endpoint Manager, go to Apps → All Apps → Add.
• Choose the app type, configure install settings, and assign it to your groups.

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Step 6: Keep Devices Updated Automatically

Unpatched laptops are a hacker’s dream. Intune can force updates on schedule.

1. Go to Devices → Update rings for Windows 10 and later.
2. Create a ring (policy) with your preferred schedule.
3. Assign it to all devices.

You can even set different rings—like a pilot ring for IT (test updates first) and a production ring for everyone else.

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Step 7: Monitor and Troubleshoot Remotely

Once devices are enrolled, Intune lets you keep tabs on everything:

• Device compliance reports: See who’s out of compliance.
• Remote actions: Lock, restart, wipe, or sync devices instantly.
• Endpoint analytics: Spot performance bottlenecks or failing hardware.

All of this lives in Devices → Monitor in Endpoint Manager.

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Step 8: Automate Onboarding and Offboarding

This is where Intune saves IT teams hours every month.

For new hires:

• Use Windows Autopilot profiles so laptops configure themselves.
• Apps, settings, and security apply automatically.

For departures:

• Use Remote Wipe to remove company data.
• Or Retire to reset the laptop for the next hire.

No need to ship laptops back just for setup or wiping—they’re handled remotely.

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Best Practices for Success

1. Start small: Test with 5–10 laptops before rolling out to everyone.
2. Use Conditional Access: Block logins from non-compliant devices.
3. Document your setup: Policies, groups, and processes—future you will thank you.
4. Review reports weekly: Catch compliance issues early.
5. Pair Intune with physical logistics tools (more on this next).

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How Rayda Makes Intune Even Better

While Intune is powerful, it doesn’t handle everything—especially when it comes to physical logistics like device procurement, storage, shipping, or retrieving of laptops from employees across the globe. That’s where Rayda steps in.

Rayda integrates with Intune so you can:

• Track laptops across their full lifecycle (procurement, storage, deployment, retrieval).
• Ship and store laptops globally without breaking your Intune enrollment or policies.
• Automate IT workflows, so onboarding and offboarding become as easy as clicking a button.
• Keep compliance tight, with both physical and software-level control.

These 2 products work together so you never have to manually chase down a laptop again.

If you want to make your IT life even easier, visit Rayda to see how our Intune integration helps companies manage laptops end-to-end, software, hardware, and everything in between.

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Final Thoughts

Learning how to manage laptops remotely with Intune can feel intimidating at first, but we hope this guide has helped simplify things for you.

Follow the steps in this guide, test with a small group, and soon you’ll be deploying apps, securing devices, and automating onboarding like a pro. And with tools like Rayda, you’ll never have to worry about the messy physical side of device management again.

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