Deploying the Autopilot agent at scale

The interactive installer is fine for one machine. This page covers everything else: picking a release channel, scripting an unattended rollout, and the deployment mode for machines nobody signs in to.

What gets installed

The agent installs to C:\Program Files\MSPControl Autopilot and registers a Windows service named MSPControl Autopilot, running as the system account.

Three parts work together:

Component	Runs as	Job
Windows service	System	Carries out commands from the control panel, reports device state, applies settings
Session agent	The signed-in user	Per-user work — drive mapping, published shortcuts, profile settings
Tray application	The signed-in user	The interface the user sees

On a machine with no interactive user, only the service does anything meaningful. See userless installation below.

Choosing a release channel

Two channels are in use:

Package	Product name	Use for
mspcontrolbrandeddesktopagent21	MSPControl Autopilot 2.1	Production. The current release.
mspcontrolbrandeddesktopagent20	MSPControl Autopilot 2.0	Estates still standardised on 2.0

If you are starting fresh, use 2.1

Deploy mspcontrolbrandeddesktopagent21. Use 2.0 only where an estate is deliberately held at that version.

Moving between 2.0 and 2.1 is an upgrade, not a reinstall

Deploy the 2.1 package over an existing 2.0 install rather than uninstalling first — uninstalling discards the agent’s local configuration and the device has to re-establish itself.

Unattended installation

Chocolatey

The packaged install already runs silently and writes a verbose log:

choco install mspcontrolbrandeddesktopagent21 -y

Exit codes 0, 3010 and 1641 all mean success — the latter two indicate a restart is needed or has been initiated.

MSI directly

msiexec /i MSPControlAutopilot.msi /quiet /l*v "$env:TEMP\MSPControlAutopilot.log.txt" IS_UPDATER=1

Argument	Purpose
/quiet	No interface
/l*v <path>	Verbose log — capture this, it is the first thing support will ask for
IS_UPDATER=1	Marks the install as an in-place update, so an existing configuration is preserved

Set IS_UPDATER=1 when upgrading

Without it, an install over an existing agent is treated as a fresh deployment. Every packaged channel passes it, so this only bites when you call msiexec yourself.

Userless installation

Servers, RDS session hosts, kiosks and shared terminals have no interactive user to sign in and supply credentials — but they still need managing. Userless installation is the supported mode for them, and it changes how the agent authenticates.

Instead of a user credential, the agent holds a system-level credential and exchanges it for a device token. The service then works entirely on its own: it reports state, accepts commands, and applies settings with no user session at all.

When a system-level credential is set, three things follow:

• IsUserlessInstallation becomes true, and the agent stops expecting a user
• UserlessDomainName records the account the credential belongs to
• The agent requests a userless token rather than authenticating as a person

No credential? The agent still authenticates

If no system-level credential is present, the agent falls back to the device API key issued at provisioning. Userless mode is about supplying a specific account, not about whether the machine can authenticate.

Because there is no user session, the per-user features do nothing on these machines. Drive mapping, published shortcuts, profile and signature management and the tray application are all inert. Do not treat their absence as a fault.

Updating

The agent can update itself. The behaviour is controlled centrally by the AutoUpdateEnabled device setting, pushed from the control panel — not configured on the machine.

• Enabled — the agent updates itself when a newer build is published to its channel.
• Disabled — updates only happen when you deploy them, through Chocolatey or your own tooling.

Users can also check manually with Check for Update in the tray application, which offers the newer build if one exists.

Turning auto-update off makes patching your job

An estate with auto-update disabled and no deployment pipeline drifts quietly. If you disable it, make sure something else is shipping agent updates — an out-of-date agent is one of the checks that blocks an Entra ID migration.

Verifying a rollout

1. Confirm the MSPControl Autopilot service is running.
2. Check the device appears in the control panel and is reporting recently.
3. On a machine with a user, confirm the tray icon shows Connected.
4. Check the installer log at the path you passed to /l*v for anything that failed quietly.

Related

• Install Autopilot — the interactive installer
• The Autopilot icon on your computer — the end-user guide
• Entra ID tenant-to-tenant migration