Unassociated Devices and JITP Rules

Unassociated Devices & JITP Rules

Unassociated Devices and JITP (Just-In-Time Provisioning) rules work together to onboard devices automatically in /IOTCONNECT™. A JITP rule provisions a device the moment it connects with a trusted certificate, while unassociated devices are the ones waiting to be attached to a template before they become fully operational.

What Is an Unassociated Device?

An unassociated device is a device that has registered with /IOTCONNECT™ but is not yet attached to a device template. Because a template defines a device’s attributes, settings, commands, and rules, an unassociated device cannot send or receive data in a meaningful way until it is associated with one.

How devices end up unassociated:

A device connects using a trusted certificate but does not yet match a provisioning rule that assigns it a template.

A device is registered ahead of time so it is recognized when it first comes online, but its template has not been chosen yet.

Unassociated devices appear in their own list so you can review them, attach them to the right template and entity, or remove the ones you do not need.

Managing Unassociated Devices

From the unassociated devices list you can take the following actions:

Review: See every device that has connected but is not yet attached to a template, filtered by unique ID, entity, name, or custom property.

Attach to a template: Associate a device with a device template and entity. Once attached, the device inherits the template’s attributes, settings, commands, and rules and becomes a fully operational device.

Delete: Remove an unassociated device you no longer need so it no longer appears in the list.

What Is a JITP Rule?

JITP (Just-In-Time Provisioning) lets /IOTCONNECT™ register a device automatically the first time it connects, instead of adding every device by hand. When a device presents a trusted certificate, the platform checks your JITP rules and, if one matches, provisions the device under the template and entity defined by that rule.

This is ideal for large fleets: you set up the rule once, and every device that ships with the right certificate is onboarded on its own as it comes online.

JITP Rule Types

/IOTCONNECT™ supports two types of JITP rules:

CA Authority: Matches devices by the Certificate Authority (CA) that signed their certificate. Every device whose certificate chains to the selected CA is provisioned under the rule’s template and entity.

Regex: Matches devices using one or more regular expressions evaluated against the device certificate details. This gives you fine-grained control — for example, routing devices to different templates based on patterns in their certificate.

How a JITP Rule Works

Setting up and using a JITP rule follows these stages:

1. Create the rule: Give the rule a name, choose the rule type (CA Authority or Regex), and select the template and entity that matching devices should be provisioned under. For a CA rule, pick the certificate; for a Regex rule, define the regex patterns.

2. Set the order: When you have more than one rule, arrange them in sequence. Rules are evaluated top to bottom and the first matching rule wins, so order determines which template a device gets if it could match several rules.

3. Device connects: A device presents its certificate on first connection. The platform evaluates the rules in order.

4. Auto-provision: On a match, the device is registered automatically under the matched template and entity — no manual step required.

5. No match: If no rule matches, the device is not auto-provisioned and may appear as an unassociated device for you to handle manually.

How They Work Together

JITP rules and unassociated devices are two sides of the same onboarding story:

With a matching JITP rule: The device is provisioned automatically under the right template the moment it connects — it never needs to sit as unassociated.

Without a matching JITP rule: The device is recognized but has no template, so it lands in the unassociated devices list where you attach it to a template manually (or delete it).

In short, well-designed JITP rules keep the unassociated devices list small by handling onboarding for you, while the unassociated list is your safety net for anything the rules did not cover.

ⓘ NOTE

JITP rules are evaluated in sequence order and the first matching rule wins — arrange your rules carefully when a device could match more than one. A Regex rule requires at least one regex pattern. Devices that match no rule remain unassociated until you attach them to a template.