How to backup policy assignments before migration and restore them if needed using the Assignment Manager.

Backup & Restore Assignments

Before making any assignment changes, Assignment Manager provides a built-in backup system to ensure you can always restore to the previous state if needed.

Safety first approach

The backup feature creates a complete snapshot of your current assignment state before any migration begins.

1) Start the Backup Process

Before any migration, click the "Backup Ready Policies" button in the Assignment Manager interface.

This backs up ALL policies in your tenant

The backup process will:

Export all policy assignments
Include assignment filters and targeting
Package everything into a downloadable ZIP file

2) Download & Store the Backup

Once the backup completes, download the ZIP file to a secure location.

Recommended naming convention:

policy-backups_tenantID_-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS.zip
Example: intune-backup-2024-01-15-143022.zip

Important

Store backups in a version-controlled location or secure file share. You may need them weeks or months later.

Understanding Backup Contents

The backup ZIP contains JSON files for each policy with complete assignment information. After extracting the ZIP, you'll see a folder structure like this:

Backup ZIP Structure

Each JSON file contains:

Policy metadata and settings
All current group assignments
Applied filters (include/exclude)
Assignment targeting details

3) Identify the Policy to Restore

Extract the backup ZIP file and locate the specific policy you need to restore.

Navigate through the folder structure:

compliance-policies/ - Compliance policies
configuration-profiles/ - Device configuration profiles
app-protection/ - App protection policies

4) Access the Microsoft Intune Portal

Currently, restoration must be done through the Microsoft Intune admin center:

Open Microsoft Intune admin center
Navigate to the appropriate policy section
Locate the policy you want to restore assignments for

Why manual restoration?

Direct restoration through Assignment Manager is planned for future releases. Manual import ensures you have full control over what gets restored.

The exported policies are raw JSON data directly from Intune, making it easy to re-import. Be aware that when uploading the JSON file to the Intune Portal will create a new policy with a new policy ID. That means you have to remove the old policy after the new one is created.

Coming soon

We are currently working on a direct restore functionality to avoid this extra step in the future.