purplegreen MDM is being prepared for its first pilot. These pages describe the development release.
The two wipe choices
Where: on the device page, open the Danger menu in the actions bar and choose "Lost or stolen" or "Release to owner". For several tablets, select them on the devices page and choose the wipe in the bulk bar (owners and admins only).
Wiping erases the tablet. You choose why, because that decides what happens to the factory reset protection (FRP) that ties the tablet to your organisation:
| Choice | Use it when | What is sent to Google | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lost or stolen | The tablet is gone or in the wrong hands | WIPE with the flag "preserve reset protection data" |
The tablet is wiped and keeps factory reset protection. It can only be set up again with one of your organisation's FRP accounts, so it is useless to a thief. |
| Release to owner | The tablet goes back to its owner, is sold, or leaves your fleet for good | WIPE without that flag |
The tablet is wiped and factory reset protection is cleared. It becomes a normal tablet anyone can set up. |
Who may wipe: owners, admins, and site managers for the tablets of their sites (several tablets at once: owners and admins only). Read-only members cannot.
The dialog states what will happen. To confirm a wipe you type the tablet's name exactly as shown (capitals and spaces count); the confirm button stays disabled until it matches. For a wipe of several tablets you type how many tablets it will hit; the list is fixed at that moment, so tablets added later are never included. Every attempt, also a refused one, is recorded in the audit log.
After you confirm, the dialog shows the command's status as it changes (it checks every 3 seconds for up to 12 minutes), and the tablet shows "Wiping" until it confirms. A tablet that is offline wipes the next time it connects: the wipe stays waiting at Google for up to 90 days, so a lost tablet still gets it when someone switches it on. If Google no longer knows the tablet, the wipe counts as done and the tablet shows "Wiped".
"Lost or stolen" only protects the tablet when the profile has at least one FRP admin account; without one, factory reset protection is off.
Separately, Force remove record (also in the Danger menu) deletes the tablet from our records and from Google without waiting for it, for tablets that will never come back (lost, stolen, broken). Only owners and admins may do it, with the same typed name. It is refused for a tablet that is still online (seen within the offline threshold): wipe that one instead. If a removed tablet does come back online, it wipes itself and keeps factory reset protection.