Activation Lock
The Apple activation lock feature triggers a barrier to reactivation for iOS devices. When it is enabled, device users must enter the correct Apple ID and password to wipe or reactivate a device. Activation lock is part of the Find My iPhone feature set and is automatically enabled with Find My iPhone. It is only disabled again once Find My iPhone is turned off completely.
SOTI MobiControl automatically enables activation lock on enrolled supervised iOS devices but you can disable it as needed. SOTI MobiControl cannot manage the feature on unsupervised devices.
Activation lock is available on devices running iOS 7 or later. See Apple's documentation on the feature for more information.
Activation Lock Bypass
While activation lock is useful in many situations, it can cause issues when transferring iOS devices between device users. To facilitate simpler device re-assignment, Apple provides a method to bypass activation lock through the SOTI MobiControl console, avoiding the tedium of deactivating the feature on each device individually. Each iOS device with activation lock enabled generates an activation lock bypass code that it sends to SOTI MobiControl when it first checks in. The code is thereafter stored in the Device Information panel. Before wiping an iOS device with activation lock enabled, you should initiate a bypass activation lock device action which sends the code to the iOS device and allows the device to automatically bypass the activation lock step of the reactivation process. If you forget to initiate the bypass before wiping the device, you can still reactivate the device manually, using the code.
There are some limitations to activation lock bypass. iOS devices only generate the code once per 'lifetime'. Devices must be factory reset to re-generate the code. If you are transferring a device from another MDM or even from another SOTI MobiControl instance, and the phone has not been factory reset, SOTI MobiControl cannot retrieve the activation lock bypass code from the device.