Owner's manual

Chapter 8 – Administration Scenarios

For many organizations, Surface Pro 3 devices provide additional functionality beyond that of other devices. This

additional functionality also presents a number of administrative tasks that may be new to IT departments, and

therefore may present new challenges. In this chapter, these administration scenarios are outlined, along with a step-

by-step examples of how these tasks can be managed.

Some of the examples, such as BitLocker encryption and user data migration, can be applied to other computer models

and are not exclusive to Surface Pro 3 devices. Many of these administrative tasks are performed during deployment

and the procedures described in this chapter can be added to the deployment procedures covered in Part II of this

guide.

Asset Tagging

The firmware of Surface Pro 3 devices allows for an asset tag to be written directly into the firmware of the device. This

asset tag can be up to 36 characters long and can contain upper and lower case letters, numbers, periods, and hyphens.

A command line utility is provided to perform this at the Microsoft Download Center using the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44076

To configure the asset tag of a Surface Pro 3 device, follow these steps:

1. Download the AssetTag tool from the Microsoft Download Center.

2. Extract the downloaded files to a location on the Surface Pro 3 device where they can be easily accessed, for

example C:\AssetTag\. The path to this location will be used in the following steps to run this program.

3. On the Surface Pro 3 device, open an Administrative Command Prompt.

4. Use the change directory command, cd, to change the working directory to the location of the downloaded files

as shown in the following:

cd C:\AssetTag\

5. Specify an asset tag with the set option of the AssetTag tool, -s, as shown in the following where SP3-Exec001 is

the specified asset tag:

AssetTag -s SP3-Exec001

6. Close the command prompt.

After the asset tag is set, the -g option can be used with the AssetTag tool to show the current asset tag:

AssetTag -g

BitLocker Encryption

Like all Windows 8.1 Professional or Enterprise devices, Surface Pro 3 devices support BitLocker drive encryption.

Surface Pro 3 devices include a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) that can be used as an authentication factor for

decryption of the operating system drive. Surface Pro 3 also includes support for the On Screen Keyboard during the

preboot experience to allow PIN authentication.