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Configuration Recommendations

One table for the situations that come up most often, and the settings that answer them.

Recommended settings

If this is your situation
Do this

You are setting up macOS deployment for the first time

Application Publish Options = Overwrite, Auto Assignment = on, one pilot Azure Group, Deployment Purpose = Available. Widen the groups once a version has gone through cleanly.

You use Retire and send a new one

Keep Auto Assignment on. Otherwise every new version deletes the old application together with its assignments and creates nothing in its place.

You manage assignments by hand in the Intune portal

Use Overwrite. It is the only option that preserves assignments you created yourself, and it carries the new version through them.

You want the installation to be mandatory

Deployment Purpose = Required. This is not what the Application / Update mode does.

You want to exclude specific products from automatic assignment

Give those products Application Custom Settings with Auto Deploy off. The per-application value overrides the global one in both directions.

The application updates itself

Send it as an Application (ignoreVersionDetection = Yes) so Intune does not fight the built-in updater over the version number.

You want Intune to enforce a specific version

Send it as an Update (ignoreVersionDetection = No).

Required installs, but users should not be interrupted

Purpose = Required plus End User Notifications = Hide all (or Restarts only).

Nothing arrived on the Macs after a scheduled run

Check the Azure Groups list first. Auto Assignment with no groups selected publishes successfully and assigns nothing.

A PKG needs preparation or cleanup steps

Use the pre-install script. Put nothing you need to trust in the post-install script — its failures are not reported.

Before the first scheduled run

  1. Azure Groups is not empty.

  2. Deployment Purpose is what you meant — Available and Required are very different for the user.

  3. Application Publish Options matches how you manage assignments (Overwrite if you touch them by hand).

  4. The product's bundle ID, bundle version and included apps are filled in. Without them Intune cannot tell an installed Mac from an uninstalled one.

  5. The minimum supported operating system matches what your fleet actually runs.

Two settings that are easy to confuse

Application / Update mode is not an installation policy. It only decides whether Intune checks the version in addition to the bundle ID. If you want an installation to be mandatory, the setting is Deployment Purpose = Required.

Auto Update is not Auto Assignment. Auto Update refreshes the product record in the Easy2Patch catalog from the vendor. Auto Assignment decides whether the published application is assigned to your groups. Either can be on without the other.

Related pages

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