managed lost mode on none cellular devices cannot turn it off.

Question

HI All, we use thousands of apple devices in our organisation, some are business critical. its hard to keep track of all the devices are they (shouldn't) but do move from department to department leaving a department without the full count of devices, we would block the mac from wifi so the user would then contact the IT service desk as the device isn't working, it could then be accounted for, black on the mac removed and return to its original location. 
 Managed lost mode is a great new feature in MDM however we seem to have hit a bug, managed lost mode works perfectly for enablement or disablement "until" you power off and power back on the device, when you power it back on it will not reconnect to Wi-Fi when lost mode is enabled so this is a big problem for none cellular devices as you cannot then disable lost mode. 
 would anyone know of a work around? i would rather not rebuild each device that's in lost mode with no wifi connection?

Haridoss Sreenivasan · Accepted Answer

Hi Andrew, 
 The issue is not related to SMC as the lost mode is a feature of apple. I think you might have to get in touch with Apple.

Andrew Mullins · Answer

Thank you, 
 i have just tested this with icloud.com lost mode and to confirm the same results. 
 just been on the phone with apple enterprise support for the last 65 minutes and i am currently waiting for the information by email but the word is, if lost mode is enabled on a none cellular device and the the device is powered off, when it powers back on it will not connect to any pre-configured Wifi, the only work around is factory reset the device. 
 [:'(]

Andrew Mullins · Answer

Apple Official response, if i receive any further updates ill let you know. 
 
 Hi Andrew, 
 
 Apologies for the late reply, I didn&rsquo;t manage to get reply from my engineers last Monday and was out sick rest of the week. 
 Tore my rotator cuff so writing with just left hand now&hellip; 
 Anyway, not your problem.

I managed to setup my iPod (non-cellular device) and using our MDM (Profile Manager) I can turn off and on Lost Mode as long as device is on. 
 But if I use a password protected WiFi, turn on Lost Mode and turn off device, then turn off Lost Mode and turn on device it will not connect. 
 Since it wont connect to WiFi it wont go out of Lost Mode. 
 I expect this is the same behaviour you are experiencing? 
 
 I can not find any official documentation on this unfortunately. 
 
 I have confirmed with my engineers that is the expected behaviour. 
 If the device is a Shared iPad or any iPad with a passcode. 
 It will not unlock keychain until logged in, and without keychain it can&rsquo;t get to WiFi settings, and without WiFi it can&rsquo;t remove Lost Mode. 
 So it&rsquo;s a catch 22, you can&rsquo;t login when it&rsquo;s in Lost Mode and it can&rsquo;t exit Lost Mode until you login. 
 
 This has been flagged by other customers and our developers are working on a workaround for this. 
 As for the time frame of that I can&rsquo;t tell, my personal guess is if they find a solution now it will be implemented in iOS12, not in a current update.

Current workaround is to reset using Apple Configurator or iTunes which requires you have access to device and a computer. 
 Another solution that one school used, have an Lightning to USB adapter and a USB to Ethernet Adapter to connect iPad to an Ethernet cable. 
 Not ideal solutions, but we don&rsquo;t have an OTA workaround unfortunately.

I&rsquo;ll flag your case with the ticket open by our engineers, So if any update comes I&rsquo;ll let you know.