It seems like every week someone in my company is either losing or getting a new device and adding the new device is quite a chore across multiple distribution provisioning profiles.
I know it's possible to add multiple devices to a provisioning profile at the same time, but what about the opposite? Is there a way to add a device to multiple provisioning profiles at the same time and if not, what is the most efficient way to manage this situation?
Take a look at https://github.com/nomad/cupertino
With this tool created by Mattt Thompsom, you can manage Devices, Provisioning Profiles, App IDs and Certificates directly from your terminal.
$ ios profiles:devices:add MyApp_Development_Profile "Johnny Appleseed iPad"=0123456789012345678901234567890123abcdef
$ ios profiles:devices:add AnotherApp_Development_Profile "Johnny Appleseed iPad"=0123456789012345678901234567890123abcdef
$ ios profiles:devices:add MyAwesome_Development_Profile "Johnny Appleseed iPad"=0123456789012345678901234567890123abcdef
It is certainly a better way than click all that stuff using the Developer Portal.
Short answer: There is no other way to add a device to multiple provisioning profiles at once, I'm afraid you won't get around doing that manually for each profile... I was in a similar situation managing multiple apps and devices for my company and being mainly responsible for iOS provisioning.
It's not possible because Apple doesn't have another interface for managing iOS provisioning than the iOS development center, so you must go with the opportunities which are given, which in this case unfortunately are adding devices manually for each provisioning profile.. :/
