SkieWhat do we do when a student breaks a school tablet?
Use the replace flow. Set up the new tablet, replace the broken one in the dashboard, and the student keeps their group, rules and history. The old seat is freed, so the school does not need a second licence for the same child. A reset device is recognised by its IMEI or serial.
A cracked screen or a dead board is the most common lifecycle event in a tablet programme, and it should not mean rebuilding a student from scratch. In Skie you open the student's device and choose replace. The student, the group, the policy, the app list and the history stay where they are. Only the hardware changes.
The new tablet has to be freshly set up or reset, like any other, and it is provisioned in the usual way with a one-time token. Once it takes over, the broken device is released and its seat is freed. Seats are one per device, so there is no double charge for the swap.
The system recognises hardware by IMEI or serial. If a repaired tablet comes back and is reset, it is the same device and does not take a second seat. If a spare tablet is to be given to another student, use reassign, which hands the device on without a new setup.
If the broken tablet is going to be thrown away, decide whether it is worth keeping it enrolled. If you want it fully released, use force remove, or use Remove Skie, which turns off every protection, shows every app again, restores DNS and releases ownership without deleting any apps. Do this before the device goes to an external repair shop.
A practical tip: keep a few spare tablets already provisioned to the same model profile, so replacement takes minutes in a classroom. Write the student name and group on the spare's tray, not on the tablet itself.