NinjaOne Policies: Change or Override a Device Policy in NinjaOne

Topic

This article explains how to change the policy that controls device settings and rules from the device dashboard in NinjaOne.

Environment

NinjaOne Endpoint Management

Description

Policy settings apply to any devices assigned to that policy, regardless of the organization to which they belong. Any changes you make to the settings affect only that device and none of the others associated with that policy.

There may be times when you wish to apply a different policy to a device than the policy assigned by the organization's defaults. There are multiple ways to do this in NinjaOne.

Select a category to learn more:

Important Considerations
Change or Edit the Policy from the Device Dashboard
Change the Policy from the Devices Search Page (Bulk)
Revert a Policy Override
Discover Which Devices Have Policy Overrides
Additional Resources

Important Considerations

Consider the following notes:

Any changes to the default policies assigned at the organization level will no longer affect the overridden device. However, you can always re-establish the link between the device and the organization's default policy settings by re-applying the policy with the asterisk next to it, per the steps in this guide.
Changing the policy for a device may discard any pending or failed operating system (OS) patches; you will receive a notification if this is applicable to the device in question.
Approving or rejecting a patch at the device level will create a patch policy override because the patch decision only affects a single device in the policy. Patches approved or rejected at the policy level (which affect all devices) will not create an override.
When selecting a new policy from the drop-down menu, you will only be given options for policies of the same device class. For example, if the device in question is a Windows server, you can only select another Windows server policy.

Change or Edit the Policy from the Device Dashboard

To change the policy used for the device from the device dashboard, perform the following steps.

Navigate to a device dashboard and open the Settings tab. Then, click Policy.
Click Change or Edit depending on your desired outcome:
- Change: Assign the device to a different policy.
- Edit: Change the policy settings for this device.

device dashboard_settings_edit or change policy.png — **Figure 1**: Change or edit a policy from the device dashboard

Change the Policy from the Devices Search Page (in Bulk)

Changing a policy from the Devices search page allows you to target multiple devices at once.

To change the policy for multiple devices simultaneously, all selected devices must be of the same type. You can only change the policy from this page; you cannot edit the policy to create overrides.

Navigate to the Devices tab in the left navigation pane.
Select one or more checkboxes next to the Device column.
Click Edit → Policy.
Select a new policy from the Policy drop-down and click Update.
NinjaOne will alert you if any changes will affect the device, such as the backup configuration. Click Proceed to confirm.

devices search_change policy.png — **Figure 2**: Change a policy from the Devices search page

Revert a Policy Override

Once you have added a device-level policy override for a device, you will be able to access and edit the overrides directly from the device Overview tab under the General section. Click the hyperlink illustrated in Figure 3 to navigate to the policy configuration page.

device_overview_policy overrides.png — **Figure 3**: Navigate to the policy configuration page

If necessary, open the Settings → Policy tab on the device dashboard and then click Clear overrides to revert the policy settings to the assigned policy's settings.

device_settings_policy_clear overrides.png — **Figure 4**: Clear policy overrides for a single device

Discover Which Devices Have Policy Overrides

From the Administration → Policies page, you can view how many devices with a certain policy have been overridden. Click the number in the Overrides column to view the device name or access its device dashboard.

The MDM Policies page does not have an Overrides column at this time.

policy overrides page.png — **Figure 5**: View policy override counts in NinjaOne

Additional Resources

Refer to Device Enrollment and Management: Resource Catalog to learn more about device management in NinjaOne.