I agree it would be nice to be able to group apps for the user automatically (like create a folder for Microsoft Apps). Unfortunately, as Apple's documentation shows, there is known way. Apple's philosophy is to give the the user as much autonomy on their device as possible. Typically the home screen layout is used in conjunction with a static group of apps to provide users a consistent experience. It does not work well with having an unknown set of apps. In this case, I would recommend that you just let the users modify their own home screen.

Did you try creating a Smart group instead? and uploading the picture?

What do you mean by Smart group and upload a picture.

Is this from Jamf School?

It's my understanding in Jamf Pro you have to create the folder and app names manually

This is frustrating. I want to be able to set up a temporary screen layout for when the devices are intially configured or reset. Then allow the user to modify it as they want going forward. This can be achieved if you set up the devices using Apple Configurator where the screen layout is a one-time snapshot but then is not enforced on-going. This would be an ideal setting in my opinion.

I wonder if it would be possible to create a smart group for:
Criteria Last Enrollment
Operator less than x days ago
Value 1

and fine tune it with other smart groups or PreStage info

then create the Configuration Profile with payload of Home Screen Layout

One would need to test this and find out if once a device falls out of scope (enrolled date) will it still keep the custom app layout preset or will all the apps go back to their happy default / random place.

I tested something like this before (but manually removing the device from scope) and sadly it seemed to just jump back to the random distribution. Worth trying again as I've seen different behaviours on different versions of iOS so it may have changed since I last tested (probably back at iOS 12).

And I agree - the inability to specify a one time setting is a HUGE failing in Configuration Profiles, both on iOS and MacOS. In many cases it actually makes the Configuration Profiles completely useless.

I wrote a script for initial iPad setup that uses the cfgutil command to load the homelayout file much like Configurator would do it, but it means you have to plug in and touch every iPad before sending it out. I use the script to also setup user customized WiFi profiles and generate a Lock Screen with user name and Barcode embedded, so there's actually some value for us touching the devices, but doesn't seem worth the effort just for the icon layout.

No, removing the payload/configuration profile just results in everything reverting to some "unknown". It does not "leave it where it is" until someone changes it. Ideally, that would be the best scenario.

I think I have a FR to allow a layout as a template.

set it, then allow user to mod:

but I don’t think this is in the MDM spec.